It’s 9:55PM, and I’m waiting on a good younger brother who’s about to fly out to advance his learning and consequently, his career. I’m just a little bit bummed, a little worried that I don’t have anything ready to say besides what I had in mind earlier this week: That tomorrow, I will be releasing a message on the Love of God through Christ being Sincere.
…
So I just got off the phone with the dude. He was sharing stuff and was saying ‘I’m only telling you this’ so for his sake I’ll just share that he was checking in his luggage, and apparently they were supposed to be sticking together with the rest of his team, because when he was trying to go to another aisle, the lady asked for his documents, which were all together with the rest of the team in another aisle. He thought it was important to indicate that instead of him taking his luggage back into the trolley to rejoin the team, it was the attendant who went out of her way to go to where his team was, to get what she needed.
My little brother thought that was pretty awesome that he hasn’t even flown out of the country and things were happening. I couldn’t help but feel his enthusiasm. It’s his first time to take an international flight and I had to remind him, yet again, to keep his damned documents in his person at all times. That, on top of just telling him to enjoy the ride, enjoy his time where he was, and to just, really, be present and alive, knowing that the worst that can happen is that he would be in eternity, his entire being finally in and with Christ.
Okay that was pretty morbid but that was the first thing I said, placing all the stress, really, for him to live, and to enjoy for the rest of us.
He might call back, or not. Either way, God bless that young man. Bright future ahead of him. Salute.
On to other things. I wanted to write about the sincerity of God’s love, and I thought, as a sort of standard operating procedure, I would take time as usual to just do a recap of what we’ve been discussing as a family in Church.
We’re about to end the first month of the year 2022, and I thought it would be prudent for us to do an evaluation on where we stand. This service, or this time we have together will probably serve that purpose.
I have mentioned that this year would be an overwhelming year. Looking back at January, let me ask all of us – how are we holding out with what we planned on doing? We still watching our food intake? We still working out? Because really, any answer you give would actually be correct. It’s not to say that if you aren’t holding out, you have a reason to beat yourself up. Maybe you set the bar too high? In other words, could it be possible that your goals are just too hard to reach? And say you do reach your goals, are they sustainable enough so you meet them consistently, on a regular basis?
Or maybe you made things too easy for yourself, that the next time around, you hold off on doing the easy task for later on in the day, saying ‘madali lang yan! (it’s easy!)’? Maybe you placed too much on your plate?
However you think you did, I guess my point is that you shouldn’t be getting too uptight about making the smallest deviations to whatever you set out to do. Think of the realizations you’ve made, and chances are you’ve probably already made adjustments – maybe on paper you were supposed to work out every day from Monday to Friday, but in reality you’ve been working out Mondays, then Wednesdays? Instead of beating yourself up for not doing Tuesday, could it just be possible that you would probably have compromised yourself if you forced yourself too hard to work out daily? I mean, I’m sharing all this out of experience, because there have been times that I worked out too hard that I was literally OUT for the rest of the day, so tired that I moved all my tasks to the next day.
What I’m trying to say is that you can choose to see said deviations as adjustments instead. I don’t know, call this positive thinking or whatever, the thing is I’m just trying to get you out of that undue self-condemnation you have…
Because more than anything, I think that’s what I’ve focused a little bit too much on for this month. In coming up with my messages, sure, I spoke on the love of God being overwhelming and practical to the best of my abilities, but I couldn’t help but think that there was a slight tinge of giving too much emphasis on fear.
But isn’t that what I ought to be saying – or wasn’t that already something I was projecting? That I shouldn’t – WE shouldn’t deny the existence of fear, but we should embrace the fact of fear and mental torment, while standing and flourishing on the TRUTH that is perfect love and life through Christ?
I guess the question I want to ask anyone and everyone is – first, are we getting through to anyone? And second, to whoever we are getting to, how are you doing so far, knowing that you are loved with a practical, necessary, personal, and present love?
I wanted to get that out of my chest, I suppose. It’s a question that needs to be asked in this opportunity to transition. Call it a feedback session.
I’m not really sure where to go from here.
I was going through 1 Timothy 1:5, but that was a bust, considering the context. See, as much as possible, I don’t want to think of a theme, and then look for a Bible verse to match; I want a theme to be birthed out of the Word that I read. But it seems, for this time and this occasion, it’s a combination of both: I think of a theme, I look for a matching Bible passage and other supplementary verses, and a theme is birthed out of that.
I suppose that’s one way to pull it off.
Okay, here’s another set of verses I pulled up. There was 2 Corinthians 8:8; by the way, I’m not sharing them here, because this final passage is what I believe is going to be what we talk about: It began just as 1 John 3:18, but now it’s looking to be 1 John 3:11-18, which goes as follows:
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
By this we know love, that He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Forgive me, I need to end this here. I’ll need to do more thinking about these passages.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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