SAFE!

Though it may look long and boring but I challenge you to read and open your mind as I did. You may not ask “How can I be saved?” now but eventually you will and our life manual or the bible answers this question.

This is the culmination of what I learned so far in church and books that I read.

“Can good works alone save me?” No. Read on if you disagree.

We do good works to glorify God as stated in

Mathew 5:16 “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven”

Good works alone cannot save us.

James 2:8-11 “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself ‘, you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said ‘You shall not commit adultery’, also said ‘You shall not murder’. If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have became a lawbreaker”

In short, if there are ten rules to follow and you only obeyed nine then that is equivalent to breaking all ten. Wow that is strict! As far as I know everyone has sinned (except Jesus and new born babies). After reading that it made me think; how then can we be saved?

The bible tells us in

Acts 2:38 “Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, every one of you,

in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.

What is the importance of baptism you might ask? Well the bible answers this in

John 3:3-5 “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ‘How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and Spirit”.

You might wonder where baptism comes in that passage or how it even relates to baptism. It only mentions the word “born again”. Read on dear friends.

Romans 6:3-4 “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life”.

Or to be “born again”.

Lastly

Galatians 3:26-29 “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise”.

Some of the promises of God are eternal life and salvation.

Well that is all for now, Cheers!

A world of kindness

Last year pastor Resty Calma of the Church of Christ talked about compassion, what is compassion anyway? The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) tells us, among other things, what compassion is. Wikipedia defines compassion as

"Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy (for the suffering of others) are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood."

Imagine a world where everyone is thinking of somebody else's welfare, where people would consider what repercussions their actions will bring, where people think before doing. Sounds surreal? Well maybe, but we can start with ourselves so that compassion will emanate from us and inspire other people to do the same.

How can we be compassionate? Well, the simple act of throwing our trash/garbage properly is a start, I know you know the consequences of throwing trash mindlessly in improper places and yet we still do it. The point is before doing something, think of doing it with compassion. Personally I know this is hard, specially when everybody around you is being an a** :-D (kidding). But seriously this is doable and it kinda feels good.

That's all folks!

Saving for the future

We all know how important it is to save for our future and it is never too late to save. When I got my first paycheck from my first job I bought anything that I can afford and saving nothing. Don't get me wrong I'm no millionaire, I'm just an average Joe earning an average "doe". That cycle continued on for quite sometime, until I realized that I'm not getting any younger and still I have nothing for the future.

Good thing our office held a free seminar regarding money management and my office mates told me about Bo Sanchez, you can Google him if you want. Now I want to share what I have learned from him regarding money management.

This may not apply to all but this is the general idea. Savings is  

NOT

SALARY - EXPENSES = SAVINGS;  

IT SHOULD BE  

SALARY - SAVINGS = EXPENSES. 

This means that once we receive our salary we should immediately deduct our savings from our salary and live off the remaining money. "How much savings should be cut off?" you might ask? Well generally it should be 10% but Bo has another scheme. He said that we should live on 70% of our salary and save the 20%. Some might react that 20% is too big to cut from their salary but you would be surprised that it is possible. It might be hard at first specially if you eat out a lot, party all the time and buy unnecessary stuff; guilty, guilty, guilty! It is doable but sacrifices must be made. The 10% goes to tithes as written in Proverbs 3:9. If 10% is too much then give what you openly want give.Then you divide the 20% into three parts, one for paying debts, one for your emergency fund (3 to 6 times your salary), one for investing on something (stocks, bonds, mutual funds etc.). Sounds complicated? It's not.

Here is an example:

MONTHLY SALARY = 10,000
70% OF SALARY = 7,000
10% OF SALARY = 1,000
20% OF SALARY = 2,000
 3 / 2000 = 666.66 or to avoid decimal numbers, 700, 650, 650

So live on 7000 per month then give the 1000 to your church.

Use your 700 to pay your debts until all your debts are paid.
Save your 650 for your emergency fund until you reach your goal.
Save your 650 for investing (depends on how much is the minimum)
When you have no more debts move your 700 to your emergency fund (600 + 750 = 1350) until you reach your goal.
When you have reached your emergency fund target. Save all your 20% for investments.

If you want to learn more and join the Truly Rich Club where you will receive stock information, inspirational talks, basically a lot of useful information you can Click here

Hope this helps.

The Running Man

Running is a great activity with lots of benefits. Everybody has their own reason/s for running, some want to loose weight, some want to beat their own record and some for health maintenance; the list goes on and on. There are lessons that can be learned from running that can also be applied to our daily lives and I like to share some of the things I learned.

I as a runner have been plagued with many injuries many of my friends know that. One of the main reasons was I was taking things too fast (in terms of distance and pace), this is a no no in running, experts say that we should only increase our load by 10% each week to avoid injuring ourselves. We should be patient while slowly building our base, no shortcuts, everything in God's time.

Long Slow Distance or LSD are long runs that are done in an easy conversation pace. This helps build endurance, teaches us to maintain pace and proper form. In the past when I run LSD I get bored and end up increasing my pace, sure enough that lead me to the path of the injured and ended up learning/gaining nothing from my LSD run. Nowadays LSD runs is my way of appreciating everything that God has made, it is when I go slow that I appreciate the beauty of sun when it hits the mountain, the freshness of the air that flows through my nose, the heavy rain which blesses the earth. Another lesson I learned is that it is when I am slow that I learn to go fast.

As written in 1 Corinthians 10:31 "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God". Running is also my expression of thank you for the energy, patience, youth and health that God has given me. Every time I run I thank Him, because if he so chooses and wills it, He can take away all those things in one word, therefore I am thankful that I can still run another day.

Enjoy everyone and do the running man!

A new life with a purpose

For 25 years I have lived a normal life, until the day I hit a big stumbling block. Some might call it "midlife crisis", honestly I do not know if it's even a midlife crisis; it's a mix of midlife and spiritual crisis but more on spiritual. A lot of thought came to my mind while I was in my room, but the question that stood out was "what am I here for?". Somehow I was lost and empty.

Months prior to that day my girlfriend invited me to their church (Church of Christ). I was raised in a Catholic environment so naturally I was closed minded and reluctant when I attended their Sunday service and it came to a point where I did not want to go to their church because I was not accustomed to their ways. I was spiritually blind at that time, following only what was said to me by people (priests, friends, family etc.). I never really bothered opening the bible even though my father gave me one when I was 12. I was content on what I was told and taught. Then came a day when I asked myself "what is the basis for my belief?". Naturally I did some research and found out that the answer to my question was given to me 12 years ago! This led me to buy a book called "The Purpose Driven Life" and after some time decided to attend again the Church of Christ which is purely based on the scripture. As time passed by the void inside me got filled up and I felt I was on the right track.

November 13, 2011 was a memorable day for me. I died and rose again with Christ in my heart, body, mind and soul. "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:4). The stumbling block turned out to be a knock from Jesus Christ, for me to accept Him and fulfill my purpose, which is to serve and obey Him. Being a christian does not mean sunshine and butterflies until the end, it will be filled with a lot of tests but I know I can pass them because I have Christ and His word as my guide. I have read in PDL that this path that I chose will be a lifelong journey, but I know I am not alone. 

 

So for those of you who experienced, is experiencing, will experience this stumbling block, I urge you to consult the bible. It is our "Swiss army knife" or our "one-stop guide" in life.

Thank you Emilaine for inviting me to your church, Gideon and Dean for praying for me back when we were still in high school to open my heart to Jesus.

I'm joining the bandwagon!

Image taken from web

Yesterday, after reading Day 32 of the "Purpose Driven Life"; yup I read PDL, don't be hatin (" ,); I decided to create a blog to voice out what I feel, think and to somehow do my part in sharing the word of God like what others have done to me. It said in the book to "use your abilities and talents to serve", so as a web developer/programmer I thought about using the web as a tool for sharing.

Kudos to Romina Puno and Emilaine Balatibat for also inspiring me to create a blog!

Let the fun begin!