Fresh Start Daily

Thank God for a day off from work. I honestly didn’t realize it was the Holy Week last week because of all the things I had to do (work, school, etc.). Going to the beach today wasn’t planned. My mother just asked me last night if I wanted to come with them. I hesitated at first because I still have to finish my assessment tools for the Curriculum Development and Assessment and Evaluation in Second Language Teaching courses and the final paper for the Teaching English Online course. However, mama said that they will just go back home today so I decided to go. I haven’t really taken a break for months now so I thought it would be a nice breather.

We went to a virgin beach in Siruma early this morning. We didn’t know there’s a beautiful beach that’s less than 2 hours away from the city! It’s a new discovery for us. The first thing I noticed when we got there was the wonderful smell of the sea. The sound of crashing waves was also very calming. I can listen to it all day long. ☀️🌊

One of my students told me that she’ll make yogurt cake this weekend and I was inspired! I love yogurt so I thought I’d make one, too. I found a simple recipe online with only 4 ingredients (Savor Easy). I just added a cup of yogurt and an egg to the recipe. The verdict? It tastes like yogurt and egg pie combined.

Ingredients:
6 cups Greek yogurt
5 medium eggs
1/3 c cornstarch
1/2 c sugar (depends on your preference)

Just mix all the ingredients and bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 35-45 minutes.

Done inflating! I’ll be sleeping with these balloons tonight. They’re supposed to be rose gold but I don’t know why they turned a little pinkish. I’ll just arrange them and do some house decoration tomorrow because I need to recharge now.

“Blessed is the man You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts.”- Psalm 65:4

We cannot approach God unless God draws us to Himself. He causes us to be drawn to Him. Our desire to come to Him is also from Him.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” – John 6:44

There is nothing we can boast to God. Our salvation is a gift from Him. It is something that is voluntarily given, not something we earn.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” – Ephesians 2:8-9

Before closing my Bible today, I flipped to the book of John but my eyes were glued to my margin notes on the last chapter of Luke. Then I read verse 45 of chapter 24:

“He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.”

He opens our spiritual eyes and makes us understand His Word. I remembered the story of Paul. He was passionate about getting rid of Christians. One day, however, when he was traveling near Damascus, Jesus spoke to him and asked why he was persecuting Him.

He responded by asking who God is. He had no personal knowledge of God and yet, he was eager to persecute those who believed in HIM. After speaking with Jesus, he suddenly lost his sight and the men traveling with him brought him to Damascus. He could not see for three days.

A disciple of God named Ananias had a vision. He was instructed to go where Paul was to lay hands on him and help regain his sight. Though Ananias was hesitant because he knew Paul’s reputation, he obeyed the Lord.

“And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.” – Acts 9:17-19

It is God who removes our spiritual blindness and makes us see things from a spiritual perspective.

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”- Luke 10:22

It is God’s favor that we get to come to Him in prayer and worship. I turned to a commentary and found that this aligns with my devotion today:

“The word ‘choosest’ refers to the fact that true piety regards all such blessings as the result of the divine favor; the fruit of His electing grace and love. We approach God with confidence, with the spirit of true worshippers, with the spirit of His children, only as He inclines us to Him, and calls us to partake of His favor.”

“It is only by divine influence that people are led to worship God. The cause–the efficient reason–why any man worships his Maker at all, is to be found in God Himself.” – Barnes’ Notes (studylight.org)

Action point:

God draws us to Himself but we have respond to His invitation. We won’t enjoy a gift if we won’t accept it. To truly experience and enjoy the gift of salvation, we have to receive it in humility.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” – Romans 10:9-10

I had a couple of hours to spare today so I decided to finally cook the ingredients I bought last week. This is one of my favorite pasta recipes. It’s simple and easy to make. I got this recipe from Kerry Ann Dunlop on Jamie Oliver’s channel.

INGREDIENTS:
1 whole white onion (large)
1 bulb of garlic (large)
1 tbsp. dried chili flakes (optional)
3/4 tbsp. ground black pepper
about 1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 kilo tomato sauce
3 cans of chunky tuna
2 tbsp. dried basil leaves
1 tbsp. dried oregano leaves (optional)
fresh basil leaves
800 g penne pasta
595 g cheddar cheese

METHODS:

• Fry onions & garlic in olive oil (low-medium heat)
• Add dried chili flakes
• Add tomato sauce
• Add fresh basil leaves, dried basil and oregano leaves.
• Add the tuna
• Add salt
• Stir
• Add the pasta to the salted boiling water
• Drain the pasta once it’s al dente
• Coat the pasta with the sauce
• Transfer it into a baking pan
• Add cheddar cheese on top
• Put fresh basil leaves on top
• Bake it in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes/until golden

We should not let our spiritual guards down ESPECIALLY when we are victorious. We are most vulnerable in victory. I have learned that it is when we are happy that we should pray all the more because it’s our nature to forget the Lord when everything’s going well. We tend to seek God earnestly when we are lonely and in despair.

I am currently reading Exodus. I just finished the story about the Israelites. They created a golden calf and worshiped it as their god because Moses took so long to come down from Mount Sinai. They saw all the mighty things that God did in Egypt—the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea and its closing in on the Egyptian soldiers, the manna and quail from heaven for forty years, the water in the wilderness, etc. They witnessed all those and still, they easily turned their hearts against the Lord just because they could not wait for Moses any longer. The Israelites were “stiff-necked” people and because of that, God wanted to consume them all. If not for Moses’ intercession, nobody would’ve escaped His holy anger and righteous judgment.

It’s easy to judge the Israelites when we read about them. However, if we are going to look inward, we will realize how similar we are to them. Just like the Israelites, our hearts are bent on sinning against the Lord. Even if we already know God and are intimate with Him, the temptation in the world and the desires of our flesh sometimes get the best of us. David was intimate with God. God promised him that He will be with him wherever he went. They had a close relationship. However, David still fell into immorality. Not only did he sin by going in to Bathsheba, but he also killed Bathsheba’s husband to cover up his sin and to have Bathsheba all to himself.

The Lord could have consumed David with his anger but He relented when David repented. We will see David pour out his heart to the Lord in the book of Psalms. He repented and God saw his remorse. God could have forsaken David but HE still called him “a man after His own heart”. What?! After the great sin that David committed He still called him that?

As with the Israelites, God relented from His anger because Moses pleaded for them. What was highlighted to me in their story is God’s mercy and compassion. Yes, God is holy and just but He is also loving.

“The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more…” – Romans 5:20

God readily forgives us when we repent because He knows that we are frail. He created us and He knows our weaknesses. While some people withhold their forgiveness when we do them wrong, God readily opens His arms wide for us the moment we start running to Him. He never turns away repentant hearts. I love Psalm 103. David beautifully described God’s lovingkindness towards us.

“For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” – Psalm 103:14

The first thing that comes into my mind when I think about God is “loving” because that’s what He is to me—that’s how He has shown Himself to me. I am no different from the Israelites. I don’t want to hurt the heart of God but sometimes I hurt Him unwillingly. Every time I hurt Him, I hurt, too. It breaks my heart to cause pain to the one who loves me the most. We cannot overcome it on our own. We can only do it with God’s help. I noticed that I easily get irritated when I spend less time in prayer and more time in the world.

“Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” – Matthew 26:41

When I let my spiritual guards down, negative thoughts start to creep in and I do/say things I usually regret. We are open to the attacks of the enemy when we don’t spend quality time with God in prayer and Bible reading. My prayer is that God will always keep me motivated to revel in His presence and fill me with the Holy Spirit.

As for me, I will all the more boast about the Lord because truly, there is nothing I can boast about myself. Without Him, I am filthy. I only live and breathe because of Him. I only have the confidence to tell people about Him because of His grace and mercy.

We will only truly understand and appreciate the Lord’s grace when we see our filthiness, when we realize our helplessness and hopelessness. We won’t appreciate the good without the bad. We will never know how beautiful God’s salvation is if we never go through difficult moments.

Above is a snippet of the intro of our three-hour synchronous, hybrid class tonight (or today for those in Ottawa). I agree with Ali about the holiday being too short. It’s like it just started and now it’s already the winter semester.

I am soooo grateful for the holiday. I was able to get my mind off of things school-related. Since I started with my studies in September last year, I have always been preoccupied with my deliverables (lesson plans, individual and group presentations, discussion boards, practicum reports, textbook evaluation, reflection paper, etc.). Working part-time and studying full-time do require commitment and…a lot of motivation! Multitasking is not a problem for me. I guess I’m just overwhelmed by the change in my routine. Functioning in three different time zones is something else. My energy is already depleted by the time I start my classes at night.

I’m not complaining. I am happy to be part of this program. I like learning new things. Not everybody is given this opportunity and I am super grateful. There were so many things I learned in the previous semester. I was introduced to concepts that I never would have learned had I not taken this program. They’re very practical. However, this is going to be another semester to conquer! I just pray that God will sustain me to finish the program well.

It’s the first time since the start of the pandemic that our family is complete again. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time with them. 💗

I read these verses yesterday but I didn’t have enough time to really study it. Verse 9 was not very clear to me so I thought I’d read it again. However, I wasn’t able to do it yesterday because I had two final quizzes to finish.

I was only going to look for the meaning of that one verse this morning but when I read the commentaries from enduringword.com (which I like because it’s very clear and detailed), I was surprised to discover things beyond the words. I’m glad that I delved deeper. There truly is so much more beyond the surface.

Ezra, the scribe and priest, read the Book of the Law before the people of Israel. It says in the story that the “ears of the people were attentive.” It’s amazing how they listened intently from morning until midday (apparently about 6 hours). They had the desire to listen and know what God had to say. Many of us cannot even listen to God’s Word for one hour without being restless. Many cannot even listen at all! I’m not quite sure if the people remained standing the whole time. The only thing it says in verse 5 is that when Ezra opened the Book, everybody stood up. Such honor and respect!

In verse 1 it says, “…they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD has commanded Israel.” Even before Ezra read the Book, people’s hearts were already conditioned to receive the Word of God. It’s true that God is the one who gives us the desire to listen to His Word. It is when God moves in our life and touches our heart that we come to Him.

“This demonstrates that the Spirit of God was at work even before the reading of God’s Word. People do not gather together as one man for the things of God unless the Spirit of God has moved them, and they do not desire God’s Word unless the Spirit of God has moved them.

If you attend to the hearing of the Word of God, it is evidence the Spirit of God is working with you. But it is still important to cooperate with that work and to not resist it. We need to cooperate and flow with the work of God’s Spirit if the Word of God is going to do its full work in us.”

In verses 7 and 8, it says that there were some men who stood beside Ezra and supported him in his ministry. They also helped the people to understand the Law. It is important that we listen to God’s Word but it’s more important that we understand it. Reading and listening to the Word of God are useless if there’s no comprehension. That is why God appoints people to help us decipher His Word.

Teachers of God’s Word are accountable to Him and it is vital that people really understand the message. Their main goal is to deliver God’s Word (not theirs) as clear as possible—not to amuse and entertain. I remember the tag line of the new preaching series in our church: “They entertain, they teach, but there are those that tell of the truth that saves.”

“First, because the things of God are spiritually discerned and not intellectually discerned. The Holy Spirit uses gifted teachers to bring spiritual discernment to us, helping us to understand what God’s Word says.”

The Word of God is obscure to people who don’t have the Spirit of God because His Word is Spirit. It is only discerned by those whose spiritual eyes have been opened by God. Also, even believers sometimes have a hard time comprehending God’s Word. Believers have different gifts and not everybody has the gift to understand everything to a T. This is my second round of reading the Bible but every single time, I discover something new. There’s always a fresh revelation.

“Understanding isn’t only necessary for those who haven’t become familiar with the Bible. Sometimes if we have heard it ten times before, we really don’t understand it for right now. When an art restorer cleans a painting, he reveals things that were always there, but the colors weren’t as bright, and the details weren’t as clear, because they were obscured — then the real impact of the painter’s work can be seen.” enduringword.com