Last Sunday, March 12, it was my first time to preach at the local congregation of Grace Communion International (GCI) in Calamba, Laguna — the birthplace of our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. This small group of brethren was recently declared as a new local congregation of GCI in the area. I was happy to have been invited in such a historic place for the first time to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
I shared with the brethren the wonderful good news that Christ’s incarnation has implicated all of us in such a way that when he died, we all died with him. When he ascended up to heaven, we were brought up along with him into the heavenly realms as Paul said in Ephesians 2:6. He not only died for us. He also lived for us. We live yet not us, but Christ lives in us and for us as our Substitute and Representative. He assumed all of us. He took all of us with him.
When Christ became flesh, there was a union of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Theologians call it as the hypostatic union. We got implicated and included in Christ. His righteousness became our righteousness. He became sin for us.
For this fourth session we have finally begun to use “Day 1” of the 40 Days of Discipleship which is a discipleship class material provided by my denomination, the Grace Communion International. We were supposed to discuss two articles namely: “Why Bother with Theology” and “Strong Theology vs. Weak Theology” all written by Dr. Joseph Tkach. But as it turned out, we had a good discussion among us and we only were able to touch the first article. We will discuss the next article for next meeting.
I also presented to the group a short 5-minute videoclip from a video of Dr. Gary Deddo in the year 2010 discussing what the purpose of doctrine is and the “what and why” of theology. I had this posted on YouTube a few years ago. Here it is below:
Just very recently, Dr. Gary Deddo gave a lecture on “GCI Doctrines and How to Teach Them.” It is all available for viewing at Youtube at this link.
From what I can gather, the group seems interested to continue with this class. I am also encouraged that there are some who are interested to watch the video of the class and even suggested that I also provide an audio version (mp3) of the class. Here then is the video of this session:
And here is the link to the audio version of this session in mp3 format. Please click this link.
Movies seldom make me cry but sometimes it does. Four years ago, the movie, Les Miserables made me cry along with my wife and my daughter as we watched the movie on big screen cinema. I guess I’ve cried several times since that time but I don’t recall which movies and when that happened.
But I didn’t expect to cry because of movies two days in a row! That happened yesterday and today.
My wife and I watched The Shack (the movie) yesterday and we just felt the grief, anger and deep emotions going through deep inside the heart of Mackenzie over the tragic death of her daughter Missy. He felt abandoned and blamed God for not doing something. Although fiction, the author William Paul Young wonderfully portrayed who God really is — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — a loving and gracious Triune God who was specially fond of Mac. He portrayed the Triune God as as a loving God — not a legalistic God. It sure made me happy that the good news about who God really is as a Triune being is being shared by a great writer and author. I’m also at the same time saddened because some think of William P. Young as a heretic. To me, he is a great Trinitarian theologian and a great writer. Anyway, that movie yesterday made me and my wife cry as we watched it in the cinema.
But early this morning, I didn’t expect to cry again as I watched another movie. It was not my plan to watch again. I was actually reading Dr. Greg Williams’ article on “Introduction to ‘Place-Sharing'” which according to him was first promoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was recently elaborated by Dr. Andrew Root. I was interested in the topic which I first heard from Ted Johnston’s blog so I read the whole article down to the end. When I got to the end, Dr. Greg suggested the movie, Goodwill Hunting for “a visual demonstration of place-sharing relationships.” The name of the movie sounded familiar and I was surprised the cast were big name actors namely: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Robin Williams whom I blogged about when he committed suicide recently.
Well, to make a long story short, it was my first time to watch the movie. Thankfully I’m a subscriber to Iflix.com and the movie was available so I watched it at home in my laptop. And the movie made me cry again.
Two days in a row! I’d better not watch a movie again. Unless someone will recommend a movie again haha!
We had our discipleship class for the third time last Wednesday, March 1 and our topic was on the importance of “Reading the Bible with a Christ-centered Lens. ” We watched a video interview of Jeff McSwain by Dr. Mike Feazell after which we gave our thoughts, impressions and what we have learned about the topic.
Before the video, I first began to share my blog on “How to Study the Bible.” I explained that essentially, there are two tasks involved in studying the Bible (or doing Hermeneutics). The first task is to get the facts and the second is on the application of the facts to our modern situation. Please visit the link for more on this one.
I also discussed with the group the importance of understanding “Figurative Language in the Bible.” I wrote about this topic here in my blog site. Please click the link if you want to know more about this subject. This topic was also explained by Dr. Mike Feazell in his book, The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God which was published in 2001.
With these two articles, we will begin using the 40 Days of Discipleship, a discipleship material provided for free by my denomination which is “a self-paced doctrinal instruction plan.” Since we will only meet once a week, we will see how it goes and maybe add some more reading assignments per week.
For the benefit of those who are following us online, here’s a video recording of that third session:
One wonderful thing about living in Santa Rosa, Laguna is that it is quite near Tagaytay City, one of the cool spots where people go for vacation or just spend a weekend there away from a busy work week in Metro Manila. Traffic is getting heavier than in previous years but still it’s a good place to go to on a weekend. It is where one can find the so-called smallest volcano in the world. But of course, some would say that the lake itself is the crater or the mouth of a big volcano. Whatever… but it’s a nice cool place to go to.
Most days when I go there it’s foggy and I can’t get a good shot of the volcano and the lake. But this afternooon, I got lucky. It’s a bright and sunny day today as I went home and passed by the volcano and lake. I finally got some good shots.
If you’re new here in my blog site, you will notice that I love photography as an art expression. I just love and appreciate the beauty of God’s creation.
You may copy and use my photos here but please ask permission first and if you’re using it for commercial uses, please consider sharing your blessings as well haha!
