Last Friday, July 14 we resumed our regular Discover the Word discipleship class with some newcomers after a break of one week. As with previous sessions, our time together was fun and although we only intended to spend about an hour and a half regularly but we usually go overtime because everyone seems to enjoy sharing their thoughts and we’re all having fun learning together as one church family in the Lord.
If you really think about it, Jesus’ instruction is simple. He told us to love God and to love our neighbors. He told us to love our enemies. Paul explains what this godly love is all about in his letter to the Corinthian Christians (1 Corinthians 13). He also explained to the Galatian Christians what fruit is produced by those who are led and guided by the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). We can learn lessons from these passages of Scripture.
This means that God has a standard for what is right and what is wrong. He has determined it. We are not the authority. God has determined what is good manners and what is bad manners — godly conduct and evil conduct.
One can be right and yet be totally wrong. One can be absolutely right in his principles and doctrines and yet be totally wrong in attitude by showing his obnoxious, flawed and repulsive character.
Photo from Google
To some extent, the apostle Paul was once like that. He was zealous and dedicated to what he truly believed was right. He really believed the early Christians were heretics. He thought he was serving God by persecuting and putting Christians in jail. He falsely accused them of spreading wrong doctrines worthy of death. This can happen to anyone of us too. We can develop so much hatred against certain persons because we believe they are heretics and hated of God and therefore we think we have the right to ridicule them, speak evil of them and character-assassinate them.
Without realizing it, our thoughts, our words and our actions are obvious to others but we usually don’t see it in ourselves. Others can see just how flawed and bad our character is. But we’re blinded by our “own righteousness” thinking that God is on our side.
Yes, we can be wrong even though we may be right when we hate, despise and speak evil of others and accuse them of wrongdoing.
It’s amazing that last Friday was already our 17th session of our discipleship class which we have called, Discover the Word. Thus far, those who are attending regularly have appreciated the value of continuing to know the Lord more and more so that as we gain more head knowledge (knowing) about God, this information is “internalized” so to speak, as it touches our hearts (being) thus leading to action (doing) — bringing about real transformation in the life of a Christian as he journeys through life with and in Christ.
For this meeting we focused on the article entitled, “Who is this Man?“ It’s an article written by Dr. Joseph Tkach, the president of Grace Communion International. He wrote about who the Lord Jesus Christ is as revealed in Scripture.
There was a lively discussion as usual and we actually went overtime. Many appreciated the well-written article which gave them more understanding about who our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is. Here’s the video of that session:
At the God is Good Christian Ministries in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Last Sunday, June 25, 2017, the house church of God is Good Christian Ministries in Santa Rosa, Laguna invited me to preach God’s Word. It is nice to speak once in a while to a local church outside of my own denomination, the Grace Communion International in the Philippines. I spoke about forgiveness from the heart. My message focused on the topic of forgiveness based on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant found in Matthew 18:21-35.
I shared to this local church the teaching of Christ on the need to forgive others coming from one’s heart. In this parable, the servant owed his Master a huge debt. All his property could be confiscated and even his wife and children could be sold for slavery. But the Master forgave him all his debt. He was now debt-free. The Master released his servant from his huge debt. The servant of course was very grateful to his Master and thanked him profusely.
Unforgiving, Umerciful Heart
But this same servant refused to forgive the small amount of debt that his fellow servant owed him. Something was wrong with his heart and attitude forgetting that he was once forgiven and released from debt. Christ condemned this unforgiving heart. In the heat of our anger against those who offend us, we sometimes — or usually — forget just how much we have been forgiven by God of our offenses and sins against him.
In this parable, Christ is teaching us to have a forgiving heart. Because God has forgiven us, we ought to forgive as well — from the heart.
Here’s the video recording of that message. My wife did the recording using my iPhone 5 without a tripod — just handheld. I did not plan to have this recorded but since the video is available anyway, may I share it here with everyone:
We were happy to see again some of our brethren who were recently hospitalized due to sickness. May they all recover fully and we continue to pray for God’s intervention for their complete healing.
Discussions focused on the Trinity doctrine and some of the questions that were generated were on salvation, human freedom and other inter-related topics. I shared to the group that the Trinity doctrine shows that God is love and that God is a God of relationships.
I can sense that we as a group are growing in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s been wonderful thus far. We were happy to see those we missed these past few weeks.
For those who are following us on the internet, here’s the video of that session. We had a lively discussion:
