Sorrow that leads to repentance

2 Corinthians 7:8-11 (NIV)

 ⁸Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— ⁹yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. ¹¹See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

                       -All I can say is... Amen!

Love: Epistles of John

(EDITED)
Love is described in different ways, but there’s only one true love. And it’s not the love everybody expected it to be. I’m just so amazed how really God’s word is so different from others. It’s unique and opposite from what the world teaches us.
In a relationship you have to have respect for your partner, you need to know true things and specific things about the person you have relationship with. You have to do what your partner wants or the other way around, you have to do all those things or else your relationship will not work. Love is not just a word we spell but it also involves requirement in order to keep the fire burning how others say it. Same with our relationship with God but the only difference is that no matter what we do He still loves us even if we walk away from Him, but the same as the relationship for others when the relationship is not being taken care of, it fades away. Not because God is not powerful but because we choose to.
In John’s letter love is one of the topics that he focused on. We can see in his letter that he talks about our love for others, our love for God individually and God’s love.

LOVE FOR OTHERS   
We are called to love another. Actually loving others is just the ripple effect when we love God first. It’s a requirement as a Christian but it’s not something we can fake. God knows everything and He knows are heart more than we do. We cannot love God and hate others, our love for others shows that we love God.
 1 John 4:20-21 “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.” I believe that we are all created in His own image and we ought to respect others no matter what their circumstances are. We respect them out of our love for God.

How do we show our love to others if they disagree with what we believe in? We don’t need to change their belief or to agree with their false belief just to have a check on our box for loving others. Now that is something we have to be careful. The danger of loving others is compromising. If they do not accept our love, then let us not push it. As believers, we don’t need to put a little bit of worldliness in our church just to be accepted by others. While Ted Kluck was having his conversation with his friend about emerging church his friend answer “loving people and ministering to the person should always be a priority but I don’t think we need to change church to fit the culture.” It’s not our job to save them but it’s our job to love them and to tell them what the truth is. When man works man works when man prays God works.

LOVE FOR GOD
If we love Him we will obey His commandments. Our love for Him does not end by accepting Him to our heart. Our relationship with Him should be growing. When do we plan to take Him seriously? Is it going to be in the middle of our walk with Him? Many baby Christians fall on this wrong expectation. Why do we even accept Him if we are not ready to commit? What good relationship has only one person giving and laying their heart out for the other person, without them doing the same in return? There is no love that does not require commitment. Not only we are fooling ourselves but we are trying to fool God.
In order to follow Him we need to let go of the things we posses. We will not reach the next level we expect to be in if we still hold on to other things that is really hindering God’s wonderful plan for us. We love God because He loved us first. We all have to go back here because most of the time we fall on being ego centric and God becomes our last priority. Above all else our relationship with Him is the most important thing we should think of.  Our relationship with Him should be right first before we can do ministry, fellowship, evangelism or anything. 
Why do we obey Him? Not just because of the rewards we will receive, not just to have gold stars in our sheet but because we love Him. We love others because we love Him. We do everything because we want to please Him.

GOD’S LOVE
It is the greatest love we could ever have. I like how John always reminds us How God loves us. He sent His Son on earth just to save us. How He longs for our communication from the beginning. We love Him because He first loved us. We have the first two love because we have God’s love. He is the foundation of our love.
It’s one of the uniqueness of Christianity among any other religion –God’s love. Our God is selfless; Our God came to earth and become a humble servant to those who do not deserve any of it. He came to heal the sick. His love can be received by everybody.
What separate us from other religion is that our God is so holy and yet He loved the unholy ones. He sent His Son to fulfill the law and to be the greatest example for us to follow. He have given so much for us not to stumble, that’s How he loved us. But we still fail, we still hurt Him. We choose the other way instead of His way. It’s not that because He’s not so powerful. But because he loved us so much that He gave us the free will to choose. Because He knew that forced love is not love at all.

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Most of the time love is being misused in a Christian life. Love is important in a fellowship but once we love the wrong thing we dig our own hole to fall. We don’t use love for our own excuses to sin. God teaches us how love should be that way we have no excuse.
We fall on taking advantage of God’s love because of our selfishness. We should be watchful with our feelings and our emotions because the devil will try to steal us in any way and even uses our feelings, especially our feelings!
In order for us to be confident in facing Him when He comes, we have to live in this world according to His will. We will only have fear if we do things here in this world that is way out of His plan. Everything that we do here on earth will be examined, if we serve Him for Him or for our own sake. It’s surprising to know that a lot of Christians are afraid to die even if they know that they’re going to heaven. And it’s because they live a selfish life, what is their difference from the world? By that they miss the whole point of God’s love.

Manga Bible

I found this last month and I think It's a really cool idea. I've seen a lot of picture bibles and it's all good, of course a real bible is better. You can't find passages in picture bible like in the normal bible. And you have to expect them on para phrasing it. And if it's a way of sharing God's word then there's nothing wrong about it.

Not all countries have the same privilege we have when it comes to reading the Bible. In other countries they even get killed if you don't spit on the bible when they ask you to.

Visit sites: http://www.themangabible.com/ & http://www.nextmanga.com/

Why Samson?

We all know Samson's story right? Samson was a strong man he killed a lot of philistines when he became the judge of Israelites. God was upon Him that time of glory. But we also know how dumb Samson was.. He didn't know that Delilah was tricking him, or maybe he knew in someway but still, 4 times? wouldn't he recognized it by that time? How dumb right?

Why do you think Samson let it happen? out of pride? lust? or love?  maybe everything, but I say LOVE, why love? He could be with any woman that time but he choose Delilah, cause he liked her, he loved her and we don't know why, but there's something special that he sees in Delilah, but so bad he wanted to have her, He might have known that Delilah was tricking her, but out of love he denies it.  I did not mean that with love you will fail, but it's how you love, who you love first, who you're pleasing out of love.. When God is not your first love, and it becomes the person you are with then lust and pride will come along. I'm not in a relationship right now and I'm not married, I don't know how hard could it be not to mix those things up, that's why reading God's word is very important, it reminds you, warns you.. not to harm you but for us to prosper. Deutoronomy 6:24 The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the ease today. jdf

If only Samson was smart enough to figure out that time, no? But see the Bible is a non-fiction book,it talks about real life. This sin, the same sin that Samson did is still happening. But lets not use it as an excuse to sin, "those guys sinned, and still there's a good outcome, Samson killed a lot of philistines.. but he died also".. That's how God loves us, there's still a good outcome even if we fail him, But as one of the apostle said it dead to sin and alive in Christ, so we might as well go with His way right? when we know that our way will never be as good as His. Lesson learned with Samson, lets not mingle with sin, even if it looks little, when we know that there's something wrong, run! don't let it come to worse before it comes to your senses. okay?  =D God bless!

You can't say you're having a bad day when the day haven't ended yet!

It's just so amazing how God will end my day, He wouldn't end it without showing His awsomeness! That's what He's been teaching me this couple of days, if my day seems to be bad on the very first minute i wake up, I should just give all the worries everything to Him, cause it's not me alone can solve everything, that I should keep on moving and wear my happy smile and be an encouragement to others, cause our moods affects every person that we past by everyday, and just trust Him on things that you're about to do everyday and He'll just give you the overflowing satisfaction. I couldn't just thank Him enough for His love and care that He let me see.

What the heck I'm talking about?.. well yesterday evening I planned everything for today, so I'll have enough time to sit and relax and have time for myself, but guess what, I never did any of it today, all was wrecked, And really.. it didn't start well, at all! It never started well whenever I don't start my day with Him, and getting busy with stuff around me.. This remind me the story of Mary and Martha, where Martha start preparing stuff for Jesus when He came to there house, but what Mary did when she saw Jesus, she sat on His feet and just listen to Him.

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:38-42)
- And that's just I great example, I'm talking bout Mary ha! before we start everything else, Let's start our day on thanking Him and listen to what He wanted us to hear.

And I just want to share my awesome day today, I don't know if its even related to everything, hahaha! so anyway, Me and My sister went to sunset to buy a guitar for moi! Long story short. I've been attending this guitar lesson for weeks, and I really wanted to have a nylon guitar but what I have is a steel string guitar, so this curious yssa put a nylon string on a steel string guitar, how did I manage to do that? well my dad actually made it happen, :)) it took us forever to change the strings :)).. and when I went to my class, my teacher just when balistic on what I did, but he got amazed on me too.. and after class he told me to check out guitar center they have the cheapest classical guitar that I could buy for 99 bucks.. So yea me and my sister went there, my plan was to go there alone, but my sister wanna come alone :) at first I got irritated cause she took hours on fixing herself, but seeing it now, I couldn't do it alone, and just thankful that she came alone with me =D.. and she didn't only bought me a new guitar but a new bag also =D.. Big thanks to that!.. the next problem I had was the bible study that I'm gonna attend by 6, and I'm still at sunset by 5 something, and the distance of that is like... so big! but I just let it go, and tell myself that I should bring along my guitar to church cause it'll take me an hour again if I go home, and guess what again, I came early at church! I even manage to help them prepare stuffs, the hard part of it was riding the line 10 bus, cause it's like rush hour when I took it, and bringing along my guitar seems to be the biggest mistake I did, but it's just amazing how God put everything together, after our bible study, it's greg and ilene's first time attending the midweek bible study cause they're away from home, and it's really our first time too to chat that long, and here greggy has been playing guitar for about a year, and we ended up planning on meeting up someday and just learn or "jam" as they call it. And I was like "wow Lord! I know it's you who did that, you're just superb!".. If you read my previous blog about me being sad for not having a friend here on L.A. with the same age range, and here how quickly God answered my prayer! it's just a wow wow wow experience!, And I pray that it'll continue on, that church we're in now is not as big as I used to attend to, and I'm just happy that He brought me along here, I know He got amazing plans for me, and all of it to know Him more and be with the people who needs the needs that I long for, that we could be an encouragement with each other,