Good for the Soul - Song Playlist

My only Kuya goes to another church congregation and recently they sponsored a Christian songwriting contest called ASOP Music Festival and sent this link thru FB of the Grand Finals Performance of former Rivermaya frontman Jayson Fernandez "Purihin Ka ng Aking Luha" by Gerwin Villa.

In different seasons of my life, the Lord always put a background music in each of it. Speaking to me not only through the bible, the people He sends but also through the lyrics of songs that strikes a chord deep inside. I'll be sharing with you my latest playlist and would be glad to know if you will take the time to listen to it as I caption the parts that stirred my very core.

Holy Is The Lord by Chris Tomlin

It's rising up all around It's the anthem of the Lord's renown 

Dominion by Citipointe

 You have rescued me
You took a wretch like this
You loved me, and You saved me

 Lord of All by Jose Villanueva III aka Quest 

I wanna live for You, Be glorified forever
My life will declare That You are Lord alone
Everything of me, Use it for Your glory
That everyone will see, Will hear, will know
That You are Lord Of All

Hosanna by Brooke Fraser

Break my heart for what is yours
Everything I am for your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

How He Loves Us by David Crowder Band

So Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don't have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about the way...
He loves us.

Like A Fire by Planetshakers

 Come like a flood and saturate me now, You're all I want
Come like the wind, And sweep throughout this place
You're all we want

 
How Great Is Our God by Chris Tomlin

Name above all names (How great is our God and all will see)

Worthy of our praise (How great, how great is our God)

My heart will sing, How great is our God

ShenaniGanns Comic Strip

Today's Episode

Believe you, me this comic strip is created by a Christian fella, Ganns. THE communication guy in VCF. If I am not mistaken, he is formerly in Fort but now in Greenhills Victory Center. Anyhow, my point being is that we, followers of Christ, do know how to have good hearty laughs minus the 'sinful human nature' i.e. green jokes. As if my Skit Guys Plus post hasn't proven that point to you yet.

Catch more of the mala-Bubble Gang out takes. Based on true to life at the ShenaniGannsComics FB Page.

The Skit Guys Plus

Oh, men you gotta love this guys!

The Skit Guys

Hilarious

  

This breaks my heart every time I watch it.

  

PLUS...

I just found out that Dan Stevens is doing the mini videos which are also available in skitguys.com. The typography videos are stunning and the message cuts to the core.

Sign Up for One2One

From Victory.org.ph:

If you’re new to having a relationship with Jesus and you’d like to understand what it really means to walk with Him, ONE 2 ONE is a tool designed to help you. Learned best with a mentor, ONE 2 ONE  will help you get the right start by guiding you through the first essential steps as you follow Christ. Topics included  are:

• Salvation
• Lordship
• Repentance
• Baptism
• The Bible and Prayer
• The Church

For those of you who’ve been wanting to share your faith with your friends or loved ones, we believe that this is a good opportunity for you to do so. With ONE 2 ONE, you can  help them know more about Jesus, follow Him, and build genuine relationships through personal follow-up and discipleship.

ONE 2 ONE is also available in Filipino and has a Campus version.

And just recently, we, at Victory Fort is launching a portal so people could easily find a mentor from the same gender/age/life stage so they could do meet ups on their preferred schedule. So visit www.victoryfort.org/one2oneforme.

By His Stripes I am Healed

I am diagnosed with subclinical hypothyroidism and pre-diabetes but Jesus is my healer...

God is in control. With all things considered, even if in my eyes at first this experience was an inconvenience in my timeline, budget and career I trust God that He reigns over the situation. He revealed to me a lot of things during my quiet times in those 7 weeks. My relationship deepens even more with Him and I think He wanted that. For me to spend even more time with Him, listening to His voice minus the office deadlines. How He took care of me as I go through this valley in life and how His power of healing and wisdom manifested. Teaching me that the true sabbath is only found in Christ, our Lord. The Holy Spirit guiding me to bible verses that consoles me during the time of pain.

As I ended my "vacation", I wrote this in my journal to keep me focus in my journey:

Claiming this. Thank you Lord.

Tulong Pinoy: VCF Relief Operation

Please do include the rest of our countrymen who are greatly affected by this in your prayers. For any help that you can extend, you can route it through our church at Victory Fort. Details here.

Twitter Hashtag #tulongpinoy

Worship Night - Month of August 2012

Every first Thursday of the month, the Victory Fellowship Church in the whole of Metro Manila gather in the different centers to hold the 'Worship Night'. Two hours of songs of praises and worship spent together as one body. So despite the rain, attendees in Victory Fort head to Every Nation Building for this month's installment.

Music Ministry

The focus of this particular Worship Night is: God the Jehovah Jireh (the Provider) as depicted in the story of Abraham in Genesis 22 when the Lord asked him to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved, one and only son. We know the story that this is just to test Abraham's faith.

Pastor-Doc Jun Aguilar highlighted in verse 13 that in the right moment God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice instead of his beloved Isaac. With this,

¹⁴ So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. ”

Pastors praying for different areas of breakthrough

Another take away for me that night is to make sure you are in the right mountain - in Abraham's case, in Moriah! In that particular mountain, the Lord prepared the bush that will caught the ram and the ram itself that will be used by His servant, Abraham.

It means that the provision can be found in the place where the Lord asks you to be. Often times, we take control of the course of our lives. Making decision out from our personal whims or preferences without asking God where He wants to direct us. With such decisions, we find ourselves lacking of provisions because it was not the place where the Lord prepared His provisions for us. End result: we get frustrated and disappointed or worse blame God for our situation.

In all things, submit it to the Lord in prayer and listen to His leading through the Holy Spirit. This is the crucial point even before we begin our journey for we would encounter lacks on our way but because we know the we have laid upon our decision at His feet we could be in faith that He will be true to His promise that He is the Jehovah Jireh, our provider.

Through Grace VGroup in attendance that night

VCF Marriage Booster: The Great Date Project - Night 2

It was the second installment of our church's Marriage Booster Seminar entitled "The Great Date Project". Praise God, I was able to clock out from the office early and hubby picked me up in Makati before it started raining. I was pretty excited to see our speaker tonight for I have been listening to his podcast for quite a while now (I usually crossover on the preaching podcast to Victory Pioneer and Malate when I'm done with the Fort all through out the weekdays). Aside from being funny, his preachings are meaty but always delivered to the congregation straight forward making it simple yet effective. Only shows his many years of walking with the Lord. Also, Ptr. Robert Hern aka Dr. Kilig of this particular night just recently remarried a couples of month ago.

Ptr. Robert Hern of Victory Pioneer aka Dr. Kilig

But for now, just allow me to boast in the Lord because He is truly have been gracious upon us on our marriage. We started out as young sixteeners as highschool sweethearts and only by the grace of God that we were able to be together for 12 years of growing up before we tied the knot. We have learned so much from that dozen of years that these past 2 and half years of actually being married is just mind-boggling blissful! It was oh sooo worth the wait. I was such a dramatic, insecure long time girlfriend back then but after knowing my Savior I am secured about myself and with the man that He blessed me with. There was no formula that I could truly share for each couple's dynamics is unique on it is own but I believe Ptr. Robert just sums it up in his keypoint:

Remember that God is the AUTHOR of your relationship.

But you know actually it makes me sad when older couples would diss us off na "wala pa yan, marami pa kayong pagdadaanan... sana nga hanggang huli ganyan pa kayo" or "ganyan pa kayo kse wala pa kayong mga anak, intayin nyo pagnagkaron...ay, sinasabi ko sayo." A bit discouraging, to some extent that might be true but c'mon Jesus died for us so that we may live our life to the full! I believe our marriage is part of that and His plans involve a marriage and a relationship that is honorable to His name. I'm holding on to that promise for I never even thought that we would last this long since we were so young and naive so all the more I could expect now that we are in Christ.

So anyway, here we are in our table buzzing over the activities (and eating the assorted flavored popcorn) to make us bond as a couple and as a group.

with the ladies in my small group (married even singles!)

"Dice Breaker" questions

I appreciate my hubby for being so game in attending this and even taking pictures of the event.

The Yaps

Also blessed to see "star couple" investing on their marriage. So let's do pray for them so that they could be a bold witness to others in their industry that with God as the third strand in their marriage, all holds together despite the intrigues in the showbiz.

The Sottos

Leaders Gear Up

The 2nd Leadership Convergence for year 2012 in Victory Christian Fellowship - Fort, happened yesterday. It is where the current 500+ leaders together with their potential leaders come together to get latest information on events and tools that will help them as they go and make disciples of Christ.

It is very encouraging to come to this event especially for the potential leaders who are still hesitant to start their own smallgroup or do One2One. By the way, the term 'leader' is for anyone who is willing to step up in their faith with the Lord to help out other people in their walk with God. It is not base on one's education or stature in life but just a matter of making a decision and partnering with Christ in the great commission under the training of our pastors.

We were instructed to come in wearing sports tshirt or jacket to complement the theme Gear Up! The jacket was very timely since it was a drizzling Saturday morning. The weather is very inviting to stay home and take extra Zzzzz especially for someone like me who had the week full of work deadline and fell asleep at 3 am of the same day. So waking at 7 am just gave me four hours of sleep but just the same, me and hubby 'geared up' and was in Every Nation Building at the Fort at 8:30 am. I also volunteered to take pictures of the event as my assignment in the Photography Ministry. But first, here we are in the photobooths =)

Ptr. Joey Bonifacio opened by leading us in prayer and almost instantly tears started falling from my eyes as I felt God's presence in the room... it is so humbling that a simpleton like ourselves can be used by God who created the universe for His will and purpose. It was also a blessing to see our very own leaders share their memories of one another on how they walk together side by side. It was such a powerful picture to see Ptr. Joey and Ptr. Emil Abello yoked together as they recount how they partnered in prayer for a miracle within their smallgroup.

 Ptr. Paolo Punzalan was hard to miss as he was standing tall in his yellow shirt. He was seemingly discussing some serious things with other people in front but when the event started: tall that he is, he is all bowed down all through out the worship. There is courage in bowing down when in the presence of God. This verse resonates in me as I write this 'Acts 7:33 Take off your sandals; the place you are standing is holy ground.' He then later announced the latest tools that will help us get equipped.

The other pastors also led us in prayer of exhortation. Ptr. Robert Gonzales was back from the US after 3 months and encouraged young people to lead as the hope of the next generation.

Then there was Ptr. Nixon Ng of Victory Malate. Funny thing was I started listening to his podcast for a month now after learning some of my cousins attending VCF Malate. I enjoyed his preaching but what I didn't know how animated he was while on stage. Another funny part was when he mentioned how small his eyes are since he is Chinese and he can only see half of the text in the projector in front of him, I laughed and looked at my hubby who has very small eyes. But seriously, up to now I am still meditating on what he shared to us!

Lastly, we were ushered to go to our respective service to get more specific instructions. Here are the Sat 4pm/Sun 8 am Taglish Service.

Ptr. Jeff, Manny and Miko

Make a Joyful Noise

After a year of prayer, humbling and perseverance, gruesome auditionsss (yeap multiple tries) and 10-week music ministry training. I present to you *insert drum roll here* ... my hubby, the latest addition as a drummer to the passionate and excellent Victory Christian Fellowship Musician Volunteers here at the Fort.

All Framed Up!

"I want to share God's goodness in  my life through music and with the talent the Lord has gifted me with. It is giving back to the one who created me", he said when asked for his reason in wanting to be part of the Music Ministry.

Group 5 performs I am Free and More than Amazing

Paolo Valenciano with his groupmates performing first in the Culminating Night

Please partner with us in prayer for provision to buy his very own Electric Drumset. All the honor and glory back to the Lord!

Spoken Word

Last Easter, Judah Paolo shared his God-given talent of the spoken word to each of the services we have at Victory Fort. There is power in the spoken word, there is power in the name of Christ. Just watch the video below and hear about the 'Word'... Tetelestai (it is finished)!

Victory Fort Saturday Easter Service 4pm

 

On a more personal note:

Well as much as I am starstruck with the celebrities in our home church, I try to contain myself not to ask to have pictures with them. No offense though to those who do it, that is just me, my stand on this matter...my mindset is that I want to respect their time -- they are there to worship the Lord just like the rest of the believers. We are all equal here anyway in the family of Christ so if time comes that I get to fellowship with them then probably that will be the time that I would have my pictures taken with them. And I am blessed that I have had some close encounter with a handful of them:

More than their stardom, I am at awe with their testimonies like Yeng Constantino, Kate Torralba, Jose 'Quest' Villanueva, Jacque Oda who offered their talents in the benefit gig 'Because Love' which Maika (my One2One discipler) invited me to be part of. Danica Sotto-Pingris was our teacher during my Victory Weekend. I got to thank her personally on how she inspired me and how much blessed I am watching her 'Be One' Video. 

Also, another 'Be One' Video that I was really touched with was Judah Paolo's. So, it was a delight shooting him onstage during the Saturday Service. I was already happy when he and his wife, Earl (who was my batchmate in T4V class) sent their thank yous in FB when I shared his picture. So I had no plans whatsoever to make a big deal out of it until we bumped into our good friend, Gutch (hubby's One2One discipler), who was with him after the Leader's Development class. Still, a bit shy but somehow the Holy Spirit spoke to me to just simply introduce myself. Thus, this picture *giggles* :

This happened right after the boys came out from the Spritual Gifts (prophesy) class so right there and then hubby Jason, Gutchie, and Judah prayed for me. In that prayer he spoke about something 'big' for me and never in my mind that I thought I would be wanting for with regards to our latest assignment from the Lord which is to take on photography. We were just simply praying for a few add ons to our very basic Nikon D3100 since we are doing a budget wedding to a fellow churchmate this May for FREE! Truly, if the Lord spoke through Judah -- God will be done!

A blessing indeed. All the glory and honor is the Lord's!

Ten Commandments Video

Faith Goals 2012

1. Faith: New members to come in to join our small group, soul to bring to the Lord and ten day mission.
2. Fitness: Freedom from PCOS and optimum health through fasting, diet, exercise
3. Finance: Career advancement and savings
4. Family: future offspring (God-willing next year)