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Ingredients:
5-6 medium-size ripe mangoes, diced
9 large tomatoes, diced
3 large red onions, diced
6 large red bell pepper, diced
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper, ground
1/2 c cilantro, finely chopped
4-5 tbsp lemon juice
chili (optional)
Here’s another recipe I used for our picnic last Sunday. I got the recipe from QVC Originals but I twisted it a bit. This salsa is one of my favorites! It has the taste of summer. It’s perfect with nachos. Yum!
Ingredients:
2 blocks of cream cheese (226g x 2)
6 large garlic cloves
1 medium-sized onion
2 tbsp basil
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp rosemary
1 tbsp lemon juice
lemon zest
2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp honey
1-2 tsp salt
about 1/3 c cilantro leaves
about 1/3 c flat parsley leaves (I used curly parsley though because I couldn’t find flat parsley in the market)
a pinch of chili (optional)
I combined some ingredients I saw online and it surprisingly turned out delicious. The measurement is really up to you. I just adjusted according to taste. You can leave out the ingredients you don’t like. I just finely chopped everything and mixed all of the ingredients together. Just sharing the recipe I used for our picnic on Mother’s Day. 😉
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)
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:
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.