PRAYER FOR THE PHILIPPINES

Heavenly Father,

Lord, you love righteousness and justice.
Thank you that You fill the earth with Your unfailing love.

Lord, You foil the plans of nations and You thwart the purposes of people.
But Your plans, O Lord, stand firm forever and the purposes of your heart through all generations.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord…
We wait in hope for you, O Lord.
 You are our help and our shield.
In You, our hearts rejoice for we trust in your holy name.
May Your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in You.

Father, we commit to you our beloved nation, the Philippines.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We give you all honor, all praise, 
all worship for You alone deserve it.

IN JESUS’ NAME!!! AMEN!

(From Psalm 33:5, 10-11, 20-22)

SHARING YOUR FAITH

Talking about the most important thing in your life can also be the most difficult thing.

I’m referring to our relationship with Christ.

Sharing what God has done and how you have come to faith in Him, particularly to your family, relatives and friends can be tricky, not to mention difficult.

I spoke to a friend who is also one of our Victory Small group leaders yesterday. He has found a simple way to share his faith to friends and family… PODCAST.

He said that he would pray and ask God for direction. Then he would sent the link of the particular podcast he thinks will speak and minister to their needs at the time.

That way, they can either choose to listen to it right away, or later, or never.  But he said, it has been an effective door opener to talk about Jesus when they would see those he sent the podcast links to.

As a matter of fact, he already has a friend who started coming to church as a result. He would come late because he’s still feeling his way through the “praise and worship” part, but enjoys the message immensely.

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For Victory Fort Podcasts, CLICK HERE.
For messages from various Victory Pastors metrowide, CLICK HERE.

WHEN A PERSON IS “LIVING IN”

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I received a Facebook message asking how to talk to a person who is living in with her boyfriend.

“During the small group discussion, they found out that this new girl was living in with her boyfriend. The new girl had questions with regards to relationships.

…being in that situation, what would be the best thing to say and do? Open the Bible and direct her to the verses that apply to her? Oh, to make things a little more complicated, the newbie’s boyfriend told her that if she leaves him because of her religion/faith, it’s like she’s condemning him.

I know that the choice of words matter a lot if I wanted the right message to be conveyed.”

This was my reply to her…

First of all, let me establish biblical principles and standards.

Fornication is sin. Sexual immorality is against the design of God. (1 Thes. 4:7)
Sex is something God created and it is beautiful … within the boundaries of marriage and marriage ALONE.

Now, in terms of confronting a person in your small group, it is important to consider the relationship.
If you have a good relationship, the Bible says that open rebuke is better than hidden love. Therefore, i will ask God for the perfect opportunity to talk to my friend about the ‘live in’ relationship. Obviously not in front of anyone so that he/she won’t be put on the spot.

If there’s no relationship, I will do my best to connect with this person so that i can earn the right to be heard so that i can come and approach with love, compassion and much of the grace of God.

The gospel is not just for those who don’t know Christ. It is equally for those who know Jesus and yet living in sin.

When Jesus said, it is finished, He meant, it is paid for – both for the Christian and those who don’t follow Christ.

Hope this helps.

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT CHRIST?

Tim Keller reminds us that when we talk to people about Jesus, we must remember to preach Christ, not moralism.

It’s actually possible to talk about Christianity without Christ. Or else, it will be like sending a note without any significant content. Or worse, it will just be a blank note.

“In nearly every text of Scripture a moral principle can be found, shown through the character of God or Christ, displayed in the good or bad examples of characters in the text, or provided as explicit commands, promises, and warnings. This moral principle is important and must be distilled clearly.

But then a crisis is created in the hearers as they understand that this moral principle creates insurmountable problems. I describe in my sermons how this practical and moral obligation is impossible to meet.

The hearers are led to a seemingly dead end, but then a hidden door opens and light comes in. Our sermons must show how the person and work of Jesus Christ bears on the subject.

First we show how our inability to live as we ought stems from our forgetting or rejecting the work of Christ. Then we show that only by repenting and rejoicing in Christ can we then live, as we know we ought.”

WHEN LIFE LEAVES YOU PARALYZED

What do you do when you are on your way towards a successful career, living out your childhood dream when suddenly life throws you a curve ball?

You no longer have what you used to have.

You seemingly have lost the dream you’ve pursued ever since.

You are left with a dilibitating situation with everything now out of your hands.

Listen to what Eugene Tejada went through and how God, coupled with spiritual family, helped him cope with his situation.

 

 

To listen to the whole message, click this link.
Then click on the video tab and watch the message entitled “Encourage One Another.”

POST MODERN IDOLATRY

POST MODERN IDOLS
by Tim Keller 

When I first began reading through the Bible I looked for some unifying themes. I concluded that there are many and that if we make just one theme the theme (such as ‘covenant’ or ‘kingdom’) we run the danger of reductionism. However, one of the main ways to read the Bible is as the ages-long struggle between true faith and idolatry. In the beginning, human beings were made to worship and serve God, and to rule over all created things in God’s name (Gen 1:26­–28). Paul understands humanity’s original sin as an act of idolatry: “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God…and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator”(Rom 1:21–25). Instead of living for God, we began to live for ourselves, or our work, or for material goods. We reversed the original intended order. And when we began to worship and serve created things, paradoxically, the created things came to rule over us. Instead of being God’s vice-regents, ruling over creation, now creation masters us. We are now subject to decay and disease and disaster. The final proof of this is death itself. We live for our own glory by toiling in the dust, but eventually we return to the dust—the dust “wins” (Gen 3:17–19). We live to make a name for ourselves but our names are forgotten. Here in the beginning of the Bible we learn that idolatry means slavery and death.

 The Ten Commandments’ first two and most basic laws (one-fifth of all God’s law to humankind) are against idolatry.* Exodus does not envision any third option between true faith and idolatry. We will either worship the uncreated God or we will worship some created thing (an idol). There is no possibility of our worshipping nothing. The classic New Testament text is Romans 1:18-25. This extensive passage on idolatry is often seen as only referring to the pagan Gentiles, but instead we should recognize it as an analysis of what sin is and how it works. Verse 21 tells us that the reason we turn to idols is because we want to control our lives, though we know that we owe God everything. “Though they knew God, they neither glorified God nor gave thanks to him.” Verse 25 tells us the strategy for control—taking created things and setting our hearts on them and building our lives around them. Since we need to worship something, because of how we are created, we cannot eliminate God without creating God-substitutes. Verses 21 and 25 tell us the two results of idolatry:

1) Deception—”their thinking became futile and their hearts were darkened,”and

2) Slavery—”they worshipped and served” created things.

Whatever we worship we will serve, for worship and service are always inextricably bound together. We are “covenantal” beings. We enter into covenant service with whatever most captures our imagination and heart. It ensnares us. So every human personality, community, thought-form, and culture will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance—either to God or to some God-substitute. Individually, we will ultimately look either to God or to success, romance, family, status, popularity, beauty or something else to make us feel personally significant and secure, and to guide our choices. Culturally we will ultimately look to either God or to the free market, the state, the elites, the will of the people, science and technology, military might, human reason, racial pride, or something else to make us corporately significant and secure, and to guide our choices.

No one grasped this better than Martin Luther, who ties the Old Testament and New Testament together remarkably in his exposition of the Ten Commandments. Luther saw how the Old Testament law against idols and the New Testament emphasis on justification by faith alone are essentially the same. He said that the Ten Commandments begin with two commandments against idolatry. It is because the fundamental problem in law-breaking is always idolatry. In other words, we never break the other commandments without first breaking the law against idolatry. Luther understood that the first commandment is really all about justification by faith, and to fail to believe in justification by faith is idolatry, which is the root of all that displeases God.

Luther says that failure to believe that God accepts us fully in Christ—and to look to something else for our salvation—is a failure to keep the first commandment; namely, having no other gods before him. To try to earn your own salvation through works-righteousness is breaking the first commandment. Then he says that we cannot truly keep any of the other laws unless we keep the first law—against idolatry and works-righteousness. Thus beneath any particular sin is this sin of rejecting Christ-salvation and indulging in self-salvation.

For example, let’s say a person cheats on his income tax form. Why does he do that? Well, you say, because he is a sinner. Yes, but why does his sin take this form? Luther’s answer would be that the man only cheated because he was making money and possessions—and the status or comfort from having more of them—more important than God and his favor. Or let’s say a person lies to a friend rather than lose face over something she has done. In that case the underlying sin is making human approval or your reputation more important than the righteousness you have in Christ.

The Bible, then, does not consider idolatry to be one sin among many (and a rare sin found only among primitive people). Rather, all our failures to trust God wholly or to live rightly are at root idolatry—something we make more important than God. There is always a reason for a sin. Under our sins are idolatrous desires.

(Taken from Monergism.com)

I’D FEEL GOOD WHEN…

Growing up, I tried to be religious. “Tried” is the operative word.

I would go to church every Sunday.  Then every first friday, I would try to go to church.  I didn’t understand the Bible but I would carry it to school for Christian Living class.  I thought carrying it would make me a better “Christian”.

Even after I gave my life to Christ when I was 17, I just basically carried my religiosity over to my walk with God.

When I would meet the standards, I would feel good about myself to the point of pride and delight for  the human approval that would follow.

When I’d blow it, I’d feel bad; not because I offended God but because I messed up my ‘spiritual score sheet.’

This went on until I realized that the gospel wasn’t just for my salvation but also for my sanctification.

Listen to what Charles Spurgeon has to say…

“When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good.”

BEHAVE TO BELONG

I was in a meeting with our LifeBox Executive Director, Joseph Bonifacio when a young man popped in our meeting.

He was downcast and in a forlorn mood.

He is usually jolly and cheerful but this day, he was not his usual self.

He then pours out his heart and tells us about the struggles he had been going through.  He was pretty disgusted with himself, feeling a lot of guilt for offending God with what he had done.

He further explains that he has been trying to control all that he had struggled in the past. He gave his life to Christ a year ago and have been victorious so far.  Until that week.

I told him that while it is saddening and heartbreaking that what happened happened, I also wasn’t very surprised.  Suppressing, bottling up and controlling … all that is quite hard to sustain. Sooner or later, we will implode.  Trying to measure up and keep the standards are failures waiting to happen.

He said something that caught my attention, “I have to make it up to Him (God).

I can’t tell you how much I’ve said that or thought that throughout my Christian life… and failed.  Trying to make it up to God is not only nonviable, much less unsustainable.

Jesus said, “It is finished.” (John 19:30)

From our salvation to our sanctification, He did it for us. Nothing to add. Nothing to append.

Tetelestai. Done. Completed. Accomplished. Executed. Fulfilled.

While we have received our salvation through the gospel of grace, we then hope to achieve our sanctification through the gospel of performance.

Eeeeeeennnnkkkk.  X Factor judges push the buttons to show 3 X’s.

We have been deceived to believe that “if you behave, you belong.”  Nothing can be farther from the truth.

As the famous hymn goes…

“‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.”

Truly, His grace is amazing.

GRACE THAT ISN’T GRACE

After an evening service one Sunday, a young man comes up to me to ask for prayer.

He relates to me his experience the past several months. He said that hearing, reading and studying the grace of God has caused him to go back to his old ways and live a life that is licentious.

In his mind, “because God is so gracious, then I know He will forgive because His grace can cover any of my mistakes.”

I can understand where he might be coming from. However, I told him that causing us to go back to our old ways and maybe worse is missing the point. That wouldn’t be the grace Paul talks about in Galatians.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You who are trying to be justified by the lawhave been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:1,4)

The operation of God’s grace on our behalf doesn’t imply any lessening of his demands. God has always and will always demand perfect obedience. But his grace is experienced when we realize that those demands for perfection for each of us have already been met by our Savior, Jesus. Jesus fulfilled all of God’s conditions on our behalf so that our relationship with God could be unconditional. Christianity is the only faith system where God both makes the demands and meets them. (Tullian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything)

WHAT KIND OF DRUNK ARE YOU?

I was stirred when I read Acts 2 again this morning for my daily reading.

The Holy Spirit came upon all the apostles. This is what we would usually refer to as the Pentecost.

At that moment, boldness and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit came upon them that they started in different languages not native to them.

Concurrently, Peter, with extraordinary boldness preached to the crowd about Christ and what He accomplished at the cross. (Remember, just a few days before that, he was cowering in fear, denying Jesus three times.

It was interesting what the following events were.

1. People thought they were drunk, even crazy.

When we decide to follow Christ and get baptized by the Holy Spirit, many will not quite understand what is taking place. Many times, we also don’t. But that’s what it means to ‘go against the flow.’ They’ll think you’re crazy for not being like everyone else.

2. Signs and wonders followed.

God did ‘extraordinary miracles‘ on their behalf. You’ll notice this throughout the book of Acts. The whole book is actually the “Acts of the Holy Spirit.”

As you put your faith in Jesus and get filled with His Spirit, expect miracles to happen in your life. Beginning miracle? Your salvation.

Jesus didn’t die to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

3. People responded to the gospel.

Signs are exactly what they are – SIGNS.

Standing by a sign going to Baguio doesn’t mean you are already in Baguio. It just points you to the direction going to Baguio.

Many get stuck in the signs (and wonders) that they camp there. Signs should point not just to the miracle but to the Miracle Worker (Jesus).

Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit… (Ephesians 5:18, NLT)