Good Stuff (Inventory, pt8) – November 11, 2024 (364/365)

I’m thinking that I’m going to blitz through these screenshots for notes I took last October. We have a lot of ground to cover.

October 15, 2024

Leading up to the Lausanne Congress Reunion in GCF Ortigas, I was asked by Abby if I could help out with worshipping on the actual event. We came up with the following arrangement:

I’d read out John 13:34-35: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We’d then be singing By Our Love, For King & Country’s rendition of the old hymn ‘We Are One In The Spirit’; after meeting up with Abby and fellow musicians/singers R’Love and Roce, we agreed to sing this without their ‘Bridge’ and just go with the verses and the chorus. We were limited to just a keyboard… but Sister Roce did a good job in carrying the rest of us through.

Then I’d read Isaiah 45:22-23 before the next song: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.”

The next song was Our Heart by Don Moen, I’d be singing the chorus and Abby sang the verse. Good thing that this was just a one-chorus, one-verse song, easier to familiarize myself with.

We put Awit Ng Bayan by Victory Worship on the shelf, but the main emcees insisted that we sang it… I was totally not familiar with the song, so Abby & R’Love took this one.

All good songs overall, focused on our heart for the nations – not so much emphasis on our works, but more of how we are driven by Christ and His finished work, to work. Good stuff.

Throughout the event, I only had this to note down, apparently:

Nations

Family

Next gen

Digitalization

Workplace

I’ve been giving updates to our own congregation regarding what I’ve picked up from this Reunion, and I’ve made it a priority to emphasize these five items… which are five identified ‘gaps’ (a Lausanne term for opportunities, I guess) for us to prioritize to fulfill the mission of declaring and displaying Christ together – and we more or less condensed the five down to two items – Nations (utilizing digitalization, and covering the Workplace also) and Family (covering the next generation, also involves digitalization, more than for the nations, actually).

And we’ve started with the Next Generation by way of our sharing on 2 Timothy in our own church. As of November 11, 2024 we’ve finished up to Chapter 2. As always, the emphasis is on Christ and His finished work, and how it brings us to minister to the generations to follow.

Good stuff.

October 16, 2024

The morning after the Lausanne Congress Reunion was reserved for a brother from another mother. I took advantage of my being in Ortigas to meet with with. Andrei & I ended up having breakfast in Wildflour, Podium.

I started taking notes as soon as we touched on the subject of pride, and he also shared a story he heard from either a priest or someone he watched online, regarding how the devil has ‘no knees’, and therefore is incapable of kneeling and humbling himself – and I’m connecting it here, how he also has no truth in him, because he has no humility to take it in.

We both agreed that ‘the final battle’ is going to be for the family and the married couple. He told me this before I made any mention about what we discussed in the Reunion, concerning the family being the Most Viable Product to prioritize in eventually discipling the nations.

The conversation then shifted from our families to his late father, and how he had nothing but respect for him – While Andrei already had enough stress taking care of 1 daughter, he was very passionate and proud in pointing out that Fred, his dad, didn’t just have Andrei but Andrei’s brother and sister to take care of, and them on top of his own siblings – and as I recall, there were a lot of them.

And apparently Fred didn’t just take care of his biological siblings, but they also ‘adopted’ at least one other guy into their family, whom Andrei eventually called his own uncle. He talked about how this ‘uncle’ didn’t have any obligation to the family, but in Fred’s passing, he had nothing but honor to give to him for everything he helped him out with.

It was humility that was the first step for Andrei’s ‘uncle’ to give such honor to his Dad… and for Andrei to hear of his Dad’s praises from someone else definitely exceeded in value compared to his pride for his own Dad.

It takes humility to give honor, and giving honor is truly a very humbling experience for all involved.

Good stuff.

The conversation continued, and we shifted to integrity, and eventually going back to pride and humility.

There are times and opportunities for us to ‘give’ a message – to communicate it, to speak it and to deliver it, to transmit to individuals and groups… but for the most part we are living OUR message, and people see this message – oftentimes much more than the messages that we compose and communicate.

Now that I’m going through it again, I’m being led to share: The priority is not consistency, but communication – and more to ourselves than to others. By default, messages are being bombarded to us, and we do ourselves and the rest of the world to choose what we communicate to ourselves… and consistency follows.

Communicate consistently for consistency in communication.

If that makes sense.

Good stuff.

Speaking of communicating, here’s a good one that I picked up on. There are things you need to say only to individuals, and there are things you ought to say only to a group of people… and there’s something we’re only able to share to both, I suppose.

On top of this, there are purposes behind our conversations. One on one conversations are for deep dives – You emphasize on focus, and deriving quality ideas. I was also led to consider that group discussions are for brainstorming – Expect things to be chaotic, but understand that there are ideas in quantity to gather.

I suppose that’s where we went back to talking on pride. There is a multitude of lies present where pride is, while there is truth present in humility. Putting this together with honor, we established that pride is honoring ourselves, while humility is honoring others.

In conclusion, humility is prioritizing our honoring others… and our honoring others is actually speaking the truth about them.

Good stuff.

Finally, Andrei said he had ‘something to share’, something he realized on his own, and something I was excited to hear from him instead of me talking to him about.

It was Andrei who was saying what I’m so used to sharing: Our works are ‘FROM His love’ and not ‘FOR His love’. Yes, he said this. He was excited about the prospect of this mindset he discovered – the mindset of doing things out of love.

We touched base on how we are both perfected AND moving from glory to glory, and we apparently also reminded each other that taking things out of context is dangerous.

I reminded Andrei of something we were also reminded about in the Reunion – We’re fixating on not thinking ‘I don’t need you’, and thinking ‘we need each other’… and it doesn’t begin with humility, but humility and honoring others all begins with giving thanks.

Gratefulness is what starts it all….