Acceptance

Acceptance tears down walls. When a man feels accepted he starts to open up. No one opens up to someone who will just judge what he says. He will coil and shut himself down. Acceptance inspires a person to grow, bloom and strive to be good.

by aats

Of Wisdom Tooth

So I just had my impacted wisdom tooth removed! The procedure lasted longer than expected; the doctor was having a hard time extracting it. Then of course the pain that comes, after the anesthesia was gone. And, comes also the difficulty eating… Oh my, however the gain is still worth the pain. I guess, it’s the same with life; we need to go through some extraction, be it a certain situation, a mindset, or even people if only it will contribute to something good in the end.

Another thing about this whole extraction thing is that, I am forced to keep silent. This is good actually, it forces me to listen, and it’s funny because last weekend’s retreat for SFC, we just discussed about the importance of silence. So, here I am, forced to be silent and benefiting from the beauty of it.

In all things, God be glorified.

by aats

The Only Remedy

In mission, the only remedy to anxieties is to forget about ourselves! Yes, forget about ourselves and think about Christ and His mission. This will drive away all worries and bring peace of mind. Stop thinking too much, it will bring you nowhere, let go and let God. Forget about yourself, forget and remember only Christ and the mission He entrusted to you. Only then will mission becomes bearable.

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God Is Not Lost

We just had a Spirit-filled Christ Pursuit Weekend in our area. This weekend retreat was the first to be done in Canada and personally I was a bit anxious because I’ve never been to any retreat like this before. So there I was, part service team and participant at the same time.

The retreat sessions were enlightening and there was this one speaker who said, “God is not lost, we are!” And he continued, “So we are the one who needs to go back to God!” What a simple yet profound truth! Yes, we are the one lost. The moment we recognize it, it’s the start of the journey towards Him.

Lead us to yourself Lord, for we are lost. Amen.

by aats

To Fade Away

I remember once when I was about to be transferred to another mission area, someone asks me if who’s going bring me to the airport? I said “Well, a Tito will drive me there.” He replied, “That’s it? I mean no one’s going to send you off? That’s so sad!” To which I replied, “Not at all, that’s how it should be in mission, well at least at the very minimum.” This scene has happened countless times before. So I just smiled, because from the beginning, we were trained to detach if only to bring sanity to our own selves and the mission area we will leave behind. Yes, it’s good to be attached because we immerse with the people but this is done with consciousness of detachment, knowing that we are not permanent. This, in the end will help the community grow.

I said, whenever I am reassigned (which happened many times already) I just fade away. We fade away, yes, because the mission has to continue. Therefore, we must do our best while we are in our assigned area because we can be reassigned at an instant and we cannot afford any drama that will hinder the mission as a whole. If the apostles before were too attached to there mission areas, Christianity could not have grown as we are today. The apostles learned to just fade away because they know too well that they were nothing, Christ is everything. Let’s learn from them.

by aats