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Twenty-Five Years of God’s Goodness and Faithfulness August 30, 2009

Posted by Jayson N. in In Retrospect, Travel Vignettes.
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Witnessing Christ’s Commission Fellowship (CCF) celebrate twenty-five years of God’s goodness and faithfulness in Araneta Coliseum today was a blast!

The Worship Service starts by displaying the “CCF History Video.”  It shows a man running on several roads and reaching different places to point CCF’s beginnings, its present location (year 2009), and the future mega site in Pasig City.

Then, the wind instruments set the atmosphere for worship and then reveal the song “With One Voice,” together with the percussion and string instruments, in a majestic way.

Ms. Kuh Ledesma renders the song “Above All” during the special number segment, leaving us in awe of God’s sovereignty and love.

Two new Christians gave their testimonies on how God saved and transformed their lives.

Enter Mr. “Pure Energy” Gary Valenciano. He walks from the right stage, says a few things, and begins to belt out the classic song “Take Me Out of the Dark.”

Amid the joyous celebration, the lights and sounds, the songs and videos, Senior Pastor Peter Tan-Chi exhorts everyone that the twenty-five years of existence of CCF is all about Jesus Christ and not about us.  Also, he gave a talk based on the parable about a father and his two sons (Luke 15:11-32).

The worship service ends with people making a commitment to the great commission (Mt. 28:18-20), and praising God through songs “We’ll Be Faithful,” “Salamat, Salamat” and “Jesus, You are So Good.”

If I were to state only three key learnings from the 25th anniversary celebration, these would be:

  1. God loves his children unconditionally, as illustrated on the parable on Luke 15:11-32;  He celebrates and rejoices after His child, who was dead,  has begun to live, and who was lost, and was now found.
  2. CCF is a movement that glorifies God through transformed lives.
  3. The 25th anniversary celebration of CCF, held in Araneta Coliseum,  is all about Jesus Christ and not about us;  He has  given us 25 years and has shown His goodness in spite of who we are.

 

Let’s Get Movin’ September 12, 2008

Posted by Jayson N. in Travel Vignettes.
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DO YOU WANT to discover what lies ahead of us? Are you aspiring to develop your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being? Do you have a burning desire to drive your life on to God’s purposes? If so, start clicking, and follow the trail.

 

As we tread the paths before us, let us keep in mind the goals we have set based on our priorities. Our real priorities are: God, loved ones, vocation, and personal well-being.

 

We—keen travelers—activate our faith, prepare ourselves, and take calculated risks to move forward. To get details on places where we want or need to go, we approach reliable, wise, and godly people. Taking left-turns, right-turns, U-turns, or perhaps stopping for a period of time is fine when checking for directions and realigning to the correct path. Try to ask several people about their experience behind a steering wheel and how did they find their way to the new destination. It would be a sad and nerve-wracking experience to realize that we’ve gone so far and then we found out that we are on the wrong track or destination.  Probably, the worst part is we have poured out our R.A.T.E.s (Resources, Abilities, Time, Energy) to it lavishly like precious oil on the vast sea, extremely difficult to retrieve. 

 

Dr. Rick Warren, a best-selling author, said that today the average life span is 25,550 days. Let us convert 25,550 days into years. The result is 70 years.

 

Perform these steps for a moment: first, get a mental picture of your current age if you’re not over 70 years old; second, get the difference of 70 years and your current age; third, freeze the answer. What do you have? ______–it’s the maximum years you could probably live on this day onward. Who knows? By God’s grace, and with a working knowledge on proper health care, we could live longer. On the other hand, God might cause us to breathe shorter according to His timeline.

 

Now that we know how many years are left for us, we can choose to live with a higher purpose and to enjoy the blessings of life, or to wander on this earth aimlessly and to fret about everything.

 

Feel free to journey with me. Bring your questions to reliable, wise, and godly people. Activate your faith, prepare yourself and take calculated risks! Move to discover, develop and drive your life on to God’s purposes. The paths may be surprisingly challenging but we have a sovereign God who intently looks at us from above and who lovingly cares for our welfare. So, let’s get started.  LET’S GET MOVIN’.