WHAT’S CHIPPING AWAY AT YOUR SOUL? WHAT’S GETTING IN THE WAY OF YOU BECOMING THE PERSON WHO GOD CREATED YOU TO BE? LET’S EXPLORE HOW WE CAN NEUTRALIZE DAMAGING INFLUENCES AND EMBRACE CLEAN LIVING IN SOUL DETOX.

Part 1 The Restless Soul

Part 2 The Heavy Soul

Part 3 The Tortured Soul

Part 4 The Seduced Soul

When you have a question that you think no one will answer except God…Be at LifeChurch Makati’s Sunday Experiences starting March 25, 2012, 3:30PM. Glorietta 4 Multipurpose Hall!

Frae & Rafael with their baby Luke under the LifeChurch Makati Café signage

This story was told to Prudy by Rafael…

Since becoming a part of LifeChurch Makati family, having Frae baptized here, this has been a great blessing to our very young family life.

We’ve experienced better changes in our lives. We’ve been blessed spiritually, emotionally and financially. Most importantly, truly we are blessed by having a relationship with God making Him center of our everything. Through LifeChurch Makati a God centered-life is at hand.

This being said, we are happy to serve Him in our own little way by being part of LifeChurch Makati Café. It is one way of paying forward the blessings that we have.

LifeChurch Makati is God-driven and God-centered church, and Jesus is with us here.

While Mommy Frae serves Dad Rafael & Baby Luke look over.

In the interview done by GMA News Network, he said he saved his family 1st, then the other people whom he didn’t personally know by bringing them to a Mango tree. After bringing them to the tree he went back to the house where they were staying, got electrical wires and extension cords then used it to tie them to the branches of the tree so that they won’t be swept away by the rushing flood.

During the 7 darkest grueling hours he encouraged and humor the people with him while he himself was very much afraid because the tree was being tossed by debris and logs rushed by the flood. He asked everyone to pray while they heard drowning people shouting and pleading for help, he knew that despite of what he did it is only God alone can save them from the devastation. And God did!

When the dawn came and the flood receded he emotionally said, ‘Kulang pa rin ang ginawa ko kasi ang dami pa ring hindi nakaligtas!”

One of Sendong's victims!

I was amazed and touched by the story and I deduced pregnant lessons for evangelism. Let me enumerate these lessons:

1. First, our world is in a devastating universal calamity called SIN like a rushing deadly flash flood. Everyone will die unless we do something about it by bringing them to a secure place of salvation. The Bible mentions that there is one tree called “Cedar of Lebanon” and  it represents Jesus Himself. We have to lead them to have a personal relationship with JESUS CHRIST alone, not to a religious institution and the likes, not even to ourselves!

2. We have to help 1st our families, then people who are around us, even those whom we do not know personally.

3. We have to secure their position and that position is in the local churches! In doing so we have to be very sensible and wise by using every means as long as it is not a sin!

4. We have to care for them and encourage them though we maybe afraid of the great devastation and we have to be totally dependent on God’s mighty saving power through PRAYER!

5. And lastly, though you dear readers can still get more lessons from this story, we have to have the mind set that we need to exert our efforts and do our very best to help people because at the end of times there will still be thousands that if we won’t do our roles will not be saved and die in that eternal hell!

Church leaders and fellow Christians, I ask you to please be sensible in doing the calling that God gave us. And let us pray for the mercy of God while we do this WONDERFUL TASK of LEADING people to SALVATION!

Volunteers doing team activity during one of the dinner & vision nights!

Our church is passionate in leading people to become fully devoted followers of Christ and we are establishing it as a church where people who are far away from God would love to attend!  These are the things we strongly believe God would like us to do in Makati City.

More so we are so much blessed with a team of leaders who owned for themselves the church’s mission and vision and a bunch of strong dedicated volunteers whose transformed lives are sold out to what LifeChurch Makati has to accomplish!

Because of these we are assured that when we do anything, short of sin, we will be able to accomplish our calling!

OUR 2011 MOVES…

The LifeChurch Makati Band

1. Despite of the comfort we had at Glorietta 4 Cinema 1 as our Sunday Experience venue, for more than a year, we decided to move to Glorietta 4 Multipurpose Hall and adjusted our time schedule from 10:45 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. We did that to be strategic in our time because our target population were mostly available during the Sunday afternoons. Doing so the lifers were given an enjoyable team effort in transforming the venue to a theater-like ambiance, hanging draperies and the screen, set up the stage and some signage. That happened last September 18, 2011!

Just a note: We also put up a LifeChurch Café where our guests can chat with the lifers over a cup of coffee before the start of the Sunday Experience.

The result of this was the increase of the weekly attendance and we never saw a Sunday where there were no new guests! Lifers were encouraged to bring their friends to a more convenient time and an accommodating venue!

Praying Team

2. Another Makati Lifers’ big move was setting up a Prayer Team who prayed for the prayer requests written in the provided Connection Cards. We have organized our team to pray for every request during the week and made it sure that the prayer messages were sent to those who requested either by mobile phone text message or through their email addresses.

We found out that people appreciated very much being prayed for and they acknowledged that this church really cared so they came back!

3. Then we moved to make our praise and worship time up to another level by organizing three LifeChurch Makati Bands. They sing positive music with state of the art equipments and performances to lead the guests and attendees to worship God in it’s fullest!

The Glorietta Activity Center

OUR 2012 MOVES…

This coming year we were impressed by God to saturate the city in an intentional way!

1. We will start to make the presence of God felt through LifeChurch Makati in the mall where we are house. We plan to have activities such as events in the activity center and the hallways, awareness of our existence through print ads and movie commercials in the Glorietta cinemas. Through these we will shout out that GOD CARES for this city, for its workers and residents!

2. Another move we will do this coming year is to multiply our LifeGroup meetings during the week nights to enhance the way how we  lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ (Disciples) by developing and training leaders, as we end 2011, to create new LifeGroups!

We know He will bring many lives back to Him through what we are going to do…THESE ARE BIG MOVES FOR GOD!!!

To all Lifers, Volunteers, Friends and prayer and financial Partners we would like to thank you for being with us in doing church for God…We do these MOVES to bring life to the people of this city because we believe…WHOEVER FINDS GOD FINDS LIFE!!!

Then this Monday afternoon I attended a Pastoral-Mentoring group lead by Manong Don Cua (founding pastor of Philadelphia Christ-centered Fellowship). I was gladly surprised when Manong Don shared with us, the pastors he is mentoring, the same passage yesterday. (Posted in  picture above).

Let me share with you here what Manong Don presented…

Here are 4 facts about problems that come into our lives (according to the letter of James):

Problems are inevitable. James said “when you meet trials” NOT “if you meet trials.” By that, he meant problems will definitely come in our lives. Problems will come for sure!

Problems are unpredictable. It is a fact of life that we cannot say when is the exact time a problem will come. It will come whether we are ready or not. Whether we are capable of handling it or not. You do not know what kind of problem will attack us. And it comes in the most unexpected time, in the most unexpected way.

Problems are of many kinds. Problems that will come our way are in many varieties. It will be petty, controllable, tremendous, unimaginable or out of this world. And to say the least, it comes also in different sizes and forms.

Yet the good thing is, with God problems are PURPOSEFUL! God has always a way to make all of these problems that come our way to give purpose, meaning and reason in our lives!

To end Manong Don stated the 3 purposes of the problems God allowed to come in our lives:

• Problems PURIFY our FAITH!
• Those FORTIFY our PATIENCE!
• And they SANCTIFY our CHARACTER!

All of my fellow pastors who were struggling in their personal and in their serving lives were so much blessed with these thoughts. And I was doubly blessed by hearing the thoughts on the same passage two times, in two different ways.

I pray that you my readers are blessed alike!

This will be a two part message series on:

September 4  ”Heart and Soul”

September 11  ”Where Everybody Knows Your Name”

This is a very challenging vision because you seldom find people far from God go to church…in fact they are most probably if not afraid, hate to attend a church, an institution directly identified with God.

To make them love to be in our church we need to have Bold Actions, one of which is to have BOLD INVITATIONS. But do you know people will not be interested in your concern unless they sense that you are interested with their concerns and that you are interested to know who they are and what they are? If they sense that….they will be attracted to what you are telling them and as a result will be interested with your invitation. That calls for INVESTING in in them!

Investing in people means spending time with them when they needed you. That may even mean investing your personal money to share goods or food to them and let me add emotional investment – that is a bit uncomfortable but if you really wanted your friends who are not incline to be with God will love and enjoy our church experiences we are called to boldly do that.

...to Christ for our BIG MOVE!

I have some few strategical tips in INVESTING and INVITING your friends and family (like that of what most networking companies are advising their members) whom you will invite:

1. First, PRAY BOLDLY for God to open your eyes of who are the people whom He would like you to lead to Him.
2. Secondly, you need to MAKE A LIST OF AS MANY FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS WHO ARE FAR FROM GOD. Do not label them by behaviors, characteristics and attitudes while you are writing down their names. Just make a list of all of them.
3. After doing so, start the screening process, again not by their characteristics and attitudes but by IDENTIFYING THEIR RESIDENTIAL LOCATION. Take out from the list those who are living in the Visayas and the Mindanao and retain the ones who are living closest to the Makati area so that our church venue will be accessible to them.
4. Then after identifying those who are residing closest to LifeChurch Makati venue…begin the big work of investing in them by RECOGNIZING WHO AMONG YOUR FRIENDS  AND FAMILY MEMBERS ARE LOW MAINTENANCE, RETAIN THEM IN THE LIST, because people who are high maintenance will tear you down in the long run. Later go back to your high maintenance friends and family when the Lord molded you with more patience and love!

As we prepare for the BIG MOVE on September we have our slogan of “LEAD ONE  to Christ!” From the remaining names in your list God will give you the right insight of whom to invest and invite  so that you will have someONE to lead.

I pray that you will enjoy your INVEST and INVITE…so that you will be over joyed when you see them enjoying our church’s experiences. God Bless your INVESTING and INVITING!!!