If you happen to be reading this, and if you’ve been reading for a while now (thanks, by the way), I just want to share that I’ll probably be filling my backlog by making a record of what I’ve been doing every day. God willing, we’ll have revelations or insights shared every now and then.
And yeah, I started last post by talking about what I talked about yesterday. I think I shared the same point in the afternoon service – I openly said while I was talking to the congregation I was a whole lot more accustomed to, that I was just going to recall everything we talked about during September, and I was hoping we would pick something up along the way. I talked about how the theme was to seek His kingdom, and how we explored what this meant to us in our service, for the entire months of September.
We recalled how we have the presence of the Lord always with us, sure as our salvation, and sure as Christ is alive and seated at the right hand of the Father. However, we established (by ‘establish’ I mean we came to an agreement by way of a majority of folks listening and nobody openly questioning) that if we are to seek the Lord, or seek His kingdom, this means that we go out of our way, intentionally appreciating this presence, this salvation, and this life we have in Christ… And in our seeking in this point of view, we established that (1) when we seek, we learn – that is, we receive revelations, we receive clarity in our way. We also learned that (2) when we seek, we adore – that is, we are brought to awe, and brought to realize how much greater our God is (a hat tip to the Scripture, where it Paul prays for us to realize the width, depth, length and height of God’s love), and (3) when we seek for help, we realize how this greatness all came in the form of Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave His life for us, before we even had a clue of how hopeless we were, and how we needed to be saved.
While these were perspectives we kept within our humble congregation, our whole point of view was further broadened by the speakers we received, that one September weekend closer to the end of the month. Starting with Pastor Marco, who shared about leadership in Genesis. During the events of creation, we learn that leaders (1) seek fellowship (it is not good for man to be alone), (2) create after our own kind (as the plants and the animals)… and far past these events and when man was made, fell, and fell further, we also learn that (3) leaders ought to promote unity, because it’s God Himself who said, after observing the people in their building of the tower of Babel – that a people united can do anything.
For some reason I dwelled a little more than I think I would’ve wanted, on Pastor Marco’s second message, regarding Fathers and Children; ‘Fathers’ being those who were born into an Old Testament mindset, earning God’s love in vain, only to be introduced to the New Covenant, where we learn how God loved us through Christ. And ‘Children’ were those who were born into the New Covenant straight away. I’m not sure if I got it all correctly but I just quickly finished this portion by saying that Fathers need to remember their first Love, just as the Church of Ephesus was doing, and that Children need to be constantly reminded of the Joy of their Salvation; Both glimpses of Christ. Yes, Christ is our First Love, and the Joy of our Salvation.
We went on to talk about Pastor Noel, but not before we proclaimed healing for him. His message was a testimony but what was important was his call for all pastors to seek integrity, humility, and purity. Now, I told my congregation (1) That, like it or not, since they are in the body of Christ, and the presence of the Lord is never apart from them, and that they shine His light no matter how they try to hide it, this makes them pastors – and, (2) if the notions of integrity, humility and purity are more intimidating than exciting for them, they ought to remember Christ, who was and is our living Integrity, Humility and Purity.
Around this time I think I stopped and just shared again on what I shared in the morning – that is, the importance of understanding Luke 15 if we were to have an idea of what it means to have a ‘Kingdom mindset’; Because it is in this chapter, in these 3 parables, where we see (as Pastor Joedy pointed out) that we were lost as sheep (curious), lost as a coin (misplaced), and lost as the prodigal son (by choice)… but the greater news is that it was Christ who went after us recklessly as the Shepherd, it was Christ who actively, intentionally looked for us as the Woman who lost her coin, and it was Christ who ran after us and embraced us and kissed us, as the Father.
Now that I think about it, can we say Christ is the Good Shepherd who sought us, the Holy Spirit is the One as a woman who seeks us (something deeper to see from ‘the Spirit searches all things’, as in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11?), and God is the Father who ran to His Son, and consequently, to us?
Point is, again, before we seek the kingdom, appreciate how the King sought us.
After this we worshipped, remembered all birthday celebrants for October, had some good and plenty food… And we had a bit of a debrief with the team, which was really just us eating and drinking for a job well done last Sunday.
Actually I wanted to tell them that one way for us to face the issues as mentioned during the more extensive Anniversary Debrief was to… well, be thankful. To the folks who only showed up during the Anniversary (and added suddenly to the headcount) and who thought of packing food to bring home first before eating at the actual event (leaving the food committee with unnecessary stress), yes, we should probably be thankful – As Christ thanked the Lord, before proceeding to feed the five thousand. It’s in our thankfulness that we would eventually arrive at providing for all, much so that they were filled at the actual event, and had much left over (to take home, perhaps)?
Yesterday? Well, I slacked. Played a lot of Jagged Alliance 3. It’s coming to the end chapters of the game which are more exciting and give you a whole lot more to do. Also, take note that this is my second playthrough, and really, I could take a break from all of this binge-playing after this run.
Not that I’m making any excuses but I do remember talking about this a little bit in both services where I spoke yesterday. I told everyone that I wasn’t really sure when I could rest, especially considering that even if Monday is our ideal time to take off as Ministers, it’s also the first day of the week for so many other people. Pastor John suggested Friday, but I’m not so sure. Anyway I left that as a question for everyone to think about. Up until now I’m not necessarily thinking about an answer, but my body and mind are insisting that Monday is still when I rest – this, after I played for around 3 and a half hours, or a sixth of my day yesterday.
I still managed to work out. Speaking of working out, I was told by a friend of mine who was helping me out with my exercising, that he sent me a fresh workout schedule via email – but when I checked said message I saw that it was just the old schedule, and I think all he changed were my runs or the cardio I needed to do before and after the lifting. I didn’t really pay attention to that cardio requirement, at least during yesterday’s workout – but I did do some shadow boxing, and then I walked for at least a kilometer outside.
Did I mention that we were supposed to have a meeting with the pastors later that day, but this time the worship teams were supposed to be involved as well? I only remember to indicate this here because it had me thinking, both during the boxing, and during the run. I was telling myself to just keep on praying, and also to just have an open mind about how it was going to turn out. It was also on my mind while I was lifting – and speaking of lifting, I do want to share that for the longest time I’ve tried to keep myself ‘accountable’ by way of taking video of my workouts (or the lifting, at least) and uploading all of it to YouTube and Instagram. This limited me from two things – (1) taking my shirt off for, I don’t know, a motivational boost haha, and (2) listening to music lest I get copyright struck.
Yesterday was different though, because I chose not to take video starting October, and that indirectly meant that I could take my shirt off and also play some music. In this case I chose to listen to a band off of a genre I’m starting to take an extreme liking towards – that is, I don’t know, Christian Heavy Metal? Band that introduced me to all of it was HolyName. Halfway through Fall On Your Knees I was worshipping and lifting, in between lifting and worshipping. Hey, I just missed working out with music, no matter how cliche it sounds.
In between all that, I wrote and finished yesterday’s post. Also had something to eat. I’m slowly getting myself back to the old 4-4-12 eating scheme I’ve had back, oh, 5 years ago. I’ve been feeling a little more stocky than I’d like and I’d like to shed some of this extra gut. With that said, I didn’t get a whole lot of rice for lunch – a good part of my bowl was sauteed greens, and it was all topped with eggplant and ground beef cooked torta-style.
Now here’s the thing – I ate, knowing I was heading to a meeting where there was food too. I was already imagining that I could resist, or I could just avoid eating after the meeting. However, when I got there, I forgot all that I had in mind regarding food intake. They served macaroni soup and pork cooked paksiw style; To my relief, they weren’t able to cook rice… but to my horror(?) they served bread rolls, and they went very well with the pork.
Oh, the meeting? Well, it turned out a lot better than I expected. Of course, when I got there, we were listening to tirade after tirade, but the main point was that we were all there – pastors and worship team representatives – we were all there to pray for each other; well, I missed out on the first portion of worship, but we all prayed for each other.
Now here’s another thing – After Pastor John prayed for the pastors, and after all of us prayed for the worship teams represented, we went back to our seats; or, at least they did. I thought of just standing while Pastor John proceeded to – oh, I don’t know, debrief I guess. But when his mom saw me still standing, she stopped him saying that I had something to say. I quickly deflected, but then she insisted that I shared… so I did.
To Pastor John I declared – not just a long life, but a full life. Fullness upon him and all that concerns him – his family and his business.
To the pastors, and to Pastor John indirectly, I declared freedom from insecurity and deficiencies.
Finally, to the worship teams, I said what I told them applies to us all; I clarified on the term, ‘decentralization’. And okay, I’m not sure if I’m right, but how I understand it, at least from seeing how Bitcoin nodes work, is that every node has a copy of the master ledger, and every transaction needs to be stored(?) on this said ledger in order for it to be considered a valid transaction. The point I wanted to share was that we all had a copy of the Master Ledger – Christ. That’s what makes us ‘decentralized’.
After all of this I drove home, spent time with Ann before eventually dozing off, another day done.
Revelations are underlined. Might write about today, today. Or not. Until the next post, God bless you.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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