Elevate Anniv 2014: Answer That Call

Answer the Call

by Daniel Carandang

written by Hannah Repotente

Elevate Alabang celebrated its 3^rd year anniversary last October 11, 2014. The whole area including the 5^th floor was crowded as a record breaking 1,400+ people attended the event and over 200 students signed up to be plugged into dgroups. For the past three years, God has tremendously blessed Elevate and the lives of every attendee. It is truly God who was able to build the movement to where it is now! All glory to God!

“Ano ang isang hinahanap mo ngayon and why?”

This questions comes every so often. Some of us might be looking for their passion in life. Some might be looking for the right circle of friends. Others might be looking for money to buy the new Iphone 6, or others might be looking for their special someone to spend their forever with. All of us desire different things but one things is for sure; we look for things that are valuable to us.

This is the same with God. He is continually seeking us out because we are important to Him. Like someone courting a girl, He is also courting us, to present His love and to receive ours. No matter how many times you reject Him, His love will never die. He is always at your doorstep, waiting to receive your “Yes”. That’s how much He loves you.

To further understand this point, let’s dive into the story of Zacchaeus the Tax Collector and see the depth of God’s love.

“Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.  A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.”

                                                                                                                                           Luke 19:1-2

During these days, tax collectors were rude, selfish, and would charge unreasonable amounts so they can keep the money beyond their quota. If you remember the girl in the Amalayer video (Paula Salvosa), then you would know that at that time that she was one of the most hated people in our country. The same with the tax collectors; they were the most hated people in Israel. Now Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, making him the worst of the worst, but a person like him is the one Jesus chose to have an encounter with.

“He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd.So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.”

                                                                                                                                    Luke 19:3-4

Now Jesus was very popular because of His uncanny ability to heal sicknesses; He can even raise people back from the dead! Now for Zacchaeus, his desire to see Jesus wasn’t ordinary curiosity. He desperately wanted to see Him; he even climbed a tree to get a better view! He didn’t care about what people would think; he so badly wanted to see Jesus at all costs!

No one really knows why Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but perhaps, he was looking for love and acceptance. He was hated and rejected by society, and he couldn’t bear the pain any longer. Maybe he was also looking for forgiveness, to release the guilt of cheating anyone’s debts. He was trying to fill the emptiness of his heart, but he could not do so, not by his own hands.

Are you like Zacchaeus?

Perhaps you too are longing for love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Maybe you know in your heart that Jesus might be the answer, but for some reason, you are refusing Him. Some common reasons are…

1. Spiritual Pride

Maybe you’re thinking that you can manage on your own, and that you don’t need Jesus in your life.

2. Fear of What Other People Will Say

Maybe you’re thinking that if you accept Jesus in your life, you will be judged by your friends, and they will tease you for your faith. That you’ll be weird in their eyes.

3. Wrong Picture of Jesus

This is the most common reason for refusing Jesus. You might think that God is a tyrant, or maybe the Church is boring. You might even think that for God to accept you, you must be very holy and do all sorts of rituals for you to have His favor. Or maybe…you think God is angry with you, and that he can’t forgive all the wrong things you’ve done in your life.

Well, that’s where you are terribly mistaken!

“When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Luke 19:5

This is certainly shocking for Zacchaeus. To think that someone so popular would initiate the conversation first, and for Him to know his name and to dwell in his house, to spend time with him! And since Jesus knew his name, then He knows every inch of Zacchaeus, his background and past included. Zacchaeus might be thinking, “If you know my name, then you must know who I am. But why are you talking to me? Why aren’t you angry at me like everyone else is? And you even want to stay at my house, with me!”

Jesus could have chosen to spend time with anyone else, but He chose to be with Zacchaeus. Despite his sins and mistakes, Jesus deeply cared for him. Like Zacchaeus, Jesus knows us, loves us, and is seeking us out!

GOD COMPLETELY KNOWS US BUT STILL SEEKS US OUT AND LOVES US.

“So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.  All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

                                                                                                                                    Luke 19: 6-7

Jesus didn’t care if people would think ill of him, as he would go into communion with one of the most hated people in their nation. All He cared about is Zacchaeus; all He cared about is us. Though we fail continuously, His love never fades. This is the love of Christ for us sinners.

“But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.”

                                                                                                                                    Luke 19: 8-9

Zacchaeus laid down all he has and repented of his evil ways. Jesus love and compassion for him touched his heart, and was even willing to give his possessions away. God’s forgiveness and love completely transformed him into something anew. Jesus even acknowledge it in verse ten, where salvation has come to his house. 

Zacchaeus is no longer alone; God is with him, always.

No words could explain the unwavering love of God for us, sinners who don’t deserve another chance. He loves us so much, that He would even send His only Son to die for us so that we may live.

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

                                                                                                                                    Luke 19:10

Like Zacchaeus, Jesus’ love overflows, and He wants to be your Lord, Savior, and Father. He is eager and willing to wipe every tear away and use us in ways we could never imagined.

His arms are open wide, and His loving smile is evident in His face. He is waiting for you.

Will you answer His call? 

#AbaMatinde: What's God Telling You?

#AbaMatinde 3

What's God Telling You?

by Rob Cahilog

written by Ashley Petallano

Jonah was given a message by God to go to Nineveh and tell them His message for them

Nineveh was capital of Assyria. Assyrians were intense people, villagers would kill themselves knowing that Assyrians would invade their land. Women were raped, men were skinned and buried in the ground. People of war. Plus, Israelites did not like Assyrians. They were sworn enemies. 

Jonah was to go and tell them that what they do are wrong and that they need to repent from their ways. It didn't seem like a good idea in the first place. It must've been like you being sent to meet with ISIS people saying that what they do is bad and share the gospel to them. You wouldn't want to go either!

As expected, Jonah's heart wasn't set for the mission. Rather than obeying the Lord, he went the opposite direction. Imagine it this way: it's like you being sent to share the gospel in Tondo but instead of going there, you choose to share it in the US. Jonah disobeyed the commandment and headed to Tarshish. 

But no one can run away from the Lord. We all know what happened next:

God disciplined him and was thrown from the boat and was swallowed by a big fish. Inside the fish, Jonah realized his mistakes. He prayed to God and despite all the hardships he went through, we learned that He was still focused on God and His character. And so, after spending three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, Jonah repented of his sin and God ordered the fish to spit out Jonah on dry land.

The rest of Jonah's adventures rest in the third chapter of the book:

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 

Jonah 3:1-3

God is a God of second chances. Jonah, despite his blunders, was given another whirl by the Lord. God said to Jonah, “Go” and he obeyed. This was a tough assignment for Jonah, knowing that he can be killed. But despite this knowledge, he chose to finally say YES to the order of his Lord.

How can one experience the AWESOMENESS of the Lord then? 

You can see it if you yourself obey Him a hundred percent!

We have to ask ourselves right now: What is God telling me to do? Probably, most of us are being prodded by the Lord to do something for His good work: share the gospel, bring a friend to church or continually pray for someone. We are a Jonah to the people around us, to our circle of influence. God saved us so that we can share the Gospel to those who don’t know and have a personal relationship with Jesus yet. Look at 2 Corinthians 5:18

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation

As Christians, we're not to be like secret agents where people are terribly shocked to discover that we follow Christ. Be very warned when your friends think that you're not the very example of a Christian. We should not be ashamed of Christ or His Word. In fact, we should be loud and proud. We boast of His grace, of how He gave us second chances though we do not deserve it. And because of this, we should also be sensitive in heeding His voice.

God is probably telling you right now, join in the campus movement. Or it might be something as simple as coming back to Him. 

WHAT IS GOD TELLING YOU TO DO TODAY?

4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

Jonah 3:4-5

Jonah must've been a nervous wreck on his first day on the job. Again, keep in mind that he was given a difficult task: tell the people of Nineveh that they will perish because of their sins. He must've been scared of the possibility of them throwing him out or hurting him for the message. 

But by His power, the people listened to Jonah and immediately repented of their sins. God used Jonah and his experience with the fish to minister to these lost people. 

This tells us that our obedience to God despite our hurts and trials can impact other people's lives in ways we've never imagined. See how Jonah's experience worked well with the Lord's message? Even the king of Nineveh (see Jonah 3:6-9) was deeply impacted. 

Despite their power and influence, the people of Nineveh were broken and empty. They were in desperate need of the God. Some of us might know people who are like them- they act all tough, knowing and confident but deep inside, they need the grace of the Lord. 

The fact that God sent Jonah to Nineveh was also His act of grace towards them, wherein He wants them to know of the wrong things they do and may turn away from it. This is God’s heart towards men. In our case, God’s heart wants for us to come back to Him. If God doesn’t care about you, then the Bible shouldn't exist. We wouldn't be able to talk to Him through prayer. 

Jonah managed to deliver the message of the Lord with his experience. The Gospel was shared to Nineveh. 

How about you?

Who's/What's your Nineveh?

#AbaMatinde: Response in Times of Adversity

#AbaMatinde2

Response in Times of Adversity

by Paolo Marty Ocaya

written by Sheresh Eunice Cortes

Life is unfair. This statement has been proven numerous times by each individual’s experiences. It’s a fact. There are times when things just don’t go our way and we mumble under our breath, “This is not my day”. How then do we respond to God during these times when He seems unfair?

Perhaps you’ve heard yourself respond this way:

Ang daya naman…

Ang sakit naman…

More often than not, we are too quick to complain about untoward incidents that come our way. But there was a man named Jonah who experienced such a misfortune – he was swallowed by a huge fish and stayed in the fish’s belly for three days and three nights! (Jonah 1:17)

If we were Jonah, we might have gotten angry at God for allowing such a thing to happen. But that’s not what happened in the story…

“From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.”

                                                                             Jonah 2:1

This verse tells us that Jonah’s initial reaction to his mishap wasn’t any kind of complaint. He prayed to God! And this is one thing most of us forget when things don’t go our way. Most of the time, our initial response to any kind of trouble is to grumble and question why such things are given to us. We forget to look up to God and lift our worries to Him.

Prayer has been too simple to us that it somehow makes no impact in us.

This is what happens when our prayers become just a ritual – it loses its impact on us. The problem with memorized prayers is that it loses its essence and is reduced to a mere literary piece being quoted repeatedly on specific events.

Prayer is not just some memorized speech. It is an intimate conversation between us and God. He granted us this privilege to personally talk to Him, so why do we take for granted such gift?

The condition of your prayer life determines the quality of your spiritual life.

Lack of communication builds a wall between the persons involved. It is the same with our relationship with God. If we don’t regularly talk to Him, our spiritual life becomes lukewarm (eventually cold!).

Going back to Jonah’s story, we can see that in this particular time of adversity, he called out to God. Here are four points that we can pick up from Jonah’s story about prayer in times of difficulty.

1.      Pray Desperately

“He said:

‘In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry…’”

Jonah 2:2

Jonah had been running away from God until the fish swallowed him. Inside the belly of the fish, Jonah called out to God finally. One of the reasons why difficulty is allowed in our lives is because sometimes we need to get hurt in order to get up.

Admit it, most of the time we don’t come to God unless we are in trouble.  We need to fall down before we look up to God. And this just proves that we cannot handle things on our own. We need God, and so we need to pray desperately. By ‘desperately’, meaning we have to be sincere and to pour our hearts out when we pray, surrendering everything to Him.

Praying desperately also helps us whenever temptations come our way. Remember that God does not allow a temptation that we cannot overcome. We need to ask Him desperately to provide a way out to triumph over a temptation. People fall into sin because they fail to look up to Him when the enemy entices them.

2.      Pray in Humility

“You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look again at Your holy temple.’”

                                                                                                                                               Jonah 2:3-4

In these verses, we can see that Jonah did not complain about the things that God has allowed in his life. He was humble enough to accept all of it. Like Jonah, we have to pray in humility. We have to learn to accept whatever God allows in our lives, whether good or bad, because either way He has a purpose.

When we don’t accept whatever God allows, we complain a lot.

3.      Pray in Faith

“The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But You, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, Lord, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple.”

                                                                                                                                               Jonah 2:5-7

Jonah believed that God would hear him and would lift him up from where he was. We can learn from these verses that when we pray, we should have faith in God and trust His works. We should desire and anticipate the answers, trusting that whatever God does, we still believe and trust Him.

If you don’t trust God, you’ll have a difficult time praying.

4.      Pray with Gratefulness

“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

                                                                                                                                               Jonah 2:8-9

Jonah prayed with shouts of grateful praise! He was inside the belly of the fish and he didn’t know when God would rescue him but he prayed with a grateful heart, trusting that God knows what He is doing and trusting God’s love for him. In the same way, we should also pray with gratefulness because everything that God allows in our lives is His will for us, and He lets it happen for a purpose because He loves us.

The gravity of our pain is nothing compared to the gravity of God’s love.

The end of the 2^nd chapter of Jonah’s life was this:

“And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land.”

                                                                                                                                                Jonah 2:10

God reveals His sovereignty in our lives when we allow Him to. Though He holds the universe in His hands, He is never too busy to hear your call. During times of adversity, we can be rest assured that God knows what He is doing, and that we can always talk to Him whenever and wherever.

MAS MAKIKITA MONG MATINDE SI LORD KAPAG MATINDE ANG PRAYER LIFE MO.

#AbaMatinde: Respond in Obedience

#AbaMatinde 1 Respond in Obedience! by Daniel Carandang written by Ana Victoria Andres In this day and age, “obedience” is an unpopular word. It’s apparently uncool and inconvenient. For an instance, rarely would you encounter a person who does not bribe a  police officer when caught with a traffic violation. We think to ourselves, we get away with it anyways but later do we realize there are always repercussions to our actions. We think we’re avoiding inconvenience; short term yes but in the long run, it will only get worse. To further illustrate, let’s take a look at the book of Jonah;  “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” - Jonah 1: 1-3 And there you have it, a prophet deliberately disobeying his God. Why do you think Jonah was so afraid? It was said that the city of Nineveh at that time was in so much chaos and also that he had grown up hating the Assyrians. Perhaps he was afraid and perhaps because of his hatred, he did not want to them to come to repentance. Just like how most of us are, when the things God commands us to do become troublesome and uncomfortable, we often run away from Him and this reveals our lack of faith. Maybe it’s because our “faith” is based merely on what we’ll get from God and fail to realize that a big part of this is God’s Lordship over our lives. After all, if we truly believe that He is indeed our Creator, wouldn’t it be only reasonable for Him to dictate how we live and what we are to do? “Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.””- Jonah 1:4-6 Because God loves us relentlessly, He will continue to pursue directing us to the right direction despite our resistance and most of the time He uses “storms” in order to shake us up out of our stubbornness. When He does this, let us not harden our hearts and ignore Him. Instead, let us come to Him and RESPOND IN OBEDIENCE! If we truly believe that He is a sovereign God, then we should also believe with all our hearts that He only knows and wants what’s best for us and He’ll do whatever it takes, may it be through painful situations, to direct us to His path.  “The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.””- Jonah 1:11-12 When we disobey God, the consequences of this action not only affects us but others as well. We see this clearly in the verses above. We also see that Jonah voluntarily asked the men to throw him into the sea and it makes one think, did he do this to spare those that are with him or was this another attempt of his to escape from God? Either way it just shows that it’s really silly to think we can ever hide or run away from God. No matter how far we’ve ran away or no matter how shrouded we are in sin, it is never too late to come back to Him and as mentioned earlier, He will do whatever it takes to make you do so. “Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” - Jonah 1:17 Not only will God forgive you and welcome you back in His arms, He will also give you another chance. After getting delivered, Jonah was once again commanded to preach against Nineveh and this time, he obeyed the Lord. Despite their wickedness, the assyrians responded with repentance and we’re talking about almost 120,000 people here. Imagine how blessed one would feel being used to carry this out. This only shows that whoever we are, whatever we have done, God can still use us for His service.  It’s never too late. Run to God, not away from God.