Annual Praise Report 2011

Thank you Lord for the following things this year:

1. I graduated from college.

2. I came back home and I am now living with my family after 7 years of living away.

3. I became a regular member of a church in my hometown.

4. I got my first formal teaching job in a high school (and I am teaching Filipino! - my least favorite subject before, lol and history - very interesting)

5. I passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers and am now a licensed high school teacher. 

6. My brother and his soon-to-be wife began to have a personal relationship with God.

7. I was baptized.

8. I got myself a bicycle and use it to try to keep fit.

9. I learned how to swim!

10. I met someone special that God used to bless me and shape my heart. Although, our future together is in the hands of God. Whatever He wants, I will follow. :-) And I should add that it's another blessing that I am able to say this from the heart.

This year has been filled of new things, new adjustments - met new friends, said goodbye to old ones, experienced heartaches, loneliness, confusion, hilarious times with friends and family, little and big joys, peace of mind, change of mindset, exploration of new knowledge and paradigms.. and most especially, lived another year walking with the Lord. It is like wine - it just keeps getting better and better as the years go by.

To my Lord Jesus Christ, we had a another blast. Thank you for sharing your heart with me through the years.

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"   

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

Water into Wine

image source: http://www.industryleadersmagazine.com/bring-it-on-scream-wine-lovers-bumper-profit-threatening-harvest-in-new-zealand/

                In a wedding feast at Cana, Jesus turned water into wine because the host had run out of it. The master of ceremonies who didn’t know where the wine had come from tasted it and said, “A host always serves the best wine first then when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine. But you have kept the best until now!” (John 2:10)

                Based on the Jewish practice, the guests would have understood if the wine that came last were inferior to those served first. Jesus, however, opted to make nothing but the best kind.

                Later in his ministry, Jesus began to have many people following after him – five thousand of them in one day and Jesus’ intention to feed each one shocked the disciples. Philip, one of them said, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!” (John 6:7)  But there was one boy there with five loaves and two fish. He offered them to Jesus who multiplied them so that everyone ate as much as they wanted. There were even leftovers!

                When Jesus works, only the best is produced and people are satisfied. This is how He works in our lives too. We work hard to make our lives better but there are times when we run out of wine or we can’t feed five thousand and the only option we have left is to tell the guests the party is over or tell the crowd to go home because we have none to offer them.

                But we can offer God our water and ask him to turn it into wine, our five loaves and two fish and ask him to multiply them. To ask him to do so is an act of faith – a way of allowing God who could do the supernatural to interfere in the natural, a way of allowing a big God to meddle in the small stuff - a way of surrendering in an ordinary way so that God could do the extraordinary. Our water could be anything we have – a sickness, an insecurity, a meaningless life, a failed expectation or a broken relationship. Our five loaves and two fish could be anything we think as insufficient – a meagre pay, a deteriorating strength or so little time to do so many things. To accept the way God would work after we have surrendered is a part of our faith-defining gesture of offering our water, our five loaves and two fish to Him.

One thing is for sure, though, our wine will turn out to be the best and our five loaves and two fish will multiply and we end up satisfied. But we have to do one thing first – surrender to Him.