JESUS CHRIST THE KING OF MY HEART
Jesus the Prince of Peace
Truly, experience is the best life teacher but, it can be quite expensive. Two Thursdays ago, I got into a car accident. I rear-ended a pick-up truck. Praise God nobody was hurt but, a week after that I found out that my car was affirmatively a total lost. On top of that, I went through very bad stomach flu a few days after the accident happened.

For the past week, my life had been quite eventful. I can, however, testify that throughout all the mishaps in the past few days, though saddened, I felt PEACE. This is true and I testify about it! I have experienced and still experience it over and over again that when Jesus Christ became the King of my heart, I receive(d) peace as sang by the angels the night when Jesus was born, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests” (Luke 2:14). The peace that God provides passes over my understanding.

God continues to prove that He provides, takes care, and knows exactly what I need. Despite of what happened and will happen in my life, I know and trust in God that He is always in control. The truth is: I would rather have Him be in control of my life in every heartbeat because I know that when I try to take over, “accidents-that-are-my-fault” happen. And whenever that happen, God loves me still, willing to forgive my transgressions and is ever so faithful in bringing me back closer to Him. Truly, there is no rock-hard heart that is impossible for God to crumble in order to reshape it and make it pure for His glory, provided that such heart belongs to one of His children.

How about you? Have you experienced the peace that only Jesus Christ, the King of all kings and queens, can give? It’s the best gift of all!

 

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
It’s Christmas time again and as the song goes, “It’s the most wonderful time of the
year.”

First of all, a very merry Christmas to everyone. But is your Christmas really merry? Of course it should be, knowing the very reason why we are celebrating Christmas. However, the many gifts we receive from family and friends or the bountiful food we have should not be the primary reason for Christmas to be merry. Christmas is about love; in fact, God’s love should be the main reason why we celebrate this wonderful event every year.

Christmas is a reminder that God came to us in flesh, through His Son Jesus Christ. We all know the story, but Christ’s birth isn’t just a mere story. We all know of how he was born, conceived by the Holy Spirit to a virgin, as prophesied in Isaiah 7:14: “ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” This and many other prophecies are all fulfilled in the New Testament, and thus we then confirm that Jesus is really the Messiah that God has announced to come through the prophets in the Old Testament more than 2000 years ago. With Jesus’ first advent, we are shared with the Good News that salvation has come to mankind, not only just to the Jews but also to us Gentiles. And that salvation is God’s ultimate free gift for us.

With this, let us instill in our hearts and minds that truly Christmas is the celebration of this incredible and precious gift to us from God Himself. May we spread and share God’s love to our family, friends, and even neighbors and everyone else while thanking God for the blessings we have received. Christmas is a joyous season to take a step back from our busy lives and just reflect on God’s love for us. Take this time as an opportunity to also pray for God’s Holy Spirit to continue to work in our lives, to continue to guide us, and pray for love.

Once again, merry Christmas and enjoy the yuletide season! God bless us all.

 

Ed Uminga

Christmas is very important thing in my life, in our life. It is about the birth of Jesus Christ who has made it possible for us to be forgiven from our sins. We are no longer an enemy, we are no longer alienated, but we are reconciled once and for all. That’s the meaning of Christmas for us.
Merry Christmas!

 

Tina Detablan

Why is Christmas important to me?

What makes Christmas important to me are reasons that I consider special. At the top of my list is it made it easier to remember the day that I accepted Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. December 24th is the day that God revealed my need for Him. I was 12 years old then. During our Sunday School class, the Lord used my teacher to show my helplessness and hopelessness. I don’t remember much except that my teacher was talking about war and I’m thinking about the casualties of war. I was sitting closer to the back of the class but as my teacher kept on talking to us, I was sweating cold and thoughts about how Jesus is the only One who can save me kept running through my mind. A day before Christmas, I asked Jesus to save me from eternal condemnation, to save me from a meaningless life, and for Him to be my Lord and Saviour.

Moving to the second part of my message, the Board members were asked to give a challenge, a vision, and a word of encouragement to The Maples Evangelical Church and so here are mine:

My encouragement and challenge to the workers of the church is to persevere and to keep on doing the Lord’s work for in due time we will reap a harvest. My SS teacher may no longer remember the day, the lesson, or who are his students on that day but the memory and the event has stayed with me. I don’t want to forget about it and I resolve to keep it etched in my memory. By his obedience and participation in God’s work, the Lord used him to change a person’s life, and that life is mine. To my fellow workers of Christ, what is your participation in the Lord’s work today? Let me assure you that no matter how mundane or simple it may be, God is using it in His own way. In fact, He might give you the opportunity to see the impact of the work and how He used it to influence the lives of fellow Christians and pre-believers.

So then, my vision is for TMEC to keep on participating in God’s kingdom. I firmly believe that the Lord is in the business of changing lives and may He keep on using our church to transform lives for His pleasure and glory. This is a call for TMEC to remain steadfast and to stay true to God’s calling. I know that in our respective lives and families we have loved ones, friends, acquaintance and even enemies that we ask God to save from eternal condemnation. Friends, why don’t we start with them? Why not start praying for a difference in the lives of these people? Let us not give up on them. Just as the Lord wisely revealed Himself to a 12-year old child, He is able to transcend any hurdles or walls that may seem to prevent them from being saved.

I believe that when Jesus came on earth, His intent is to make a big impact on many lives. The beginning of Jesus’ earthly life is humble and plain but His earthly life was so powerful that even up to now and until He comes back, lives will be changed. TMEC, let’s keep on participating in God’s work and may the Lord keep on using our church to transform lives.

A blessed Christmas to all of us!

 

Eric Lozada

 

Dave de Leon

This year, we, the members of the Board of Trustees were challenged to share our personal insights and views about the importance of Christmas. Personally, I find the Christmas season to be a busy time. From the hustle and bustle of buying gifts to getting personal goals accomplished before the end of the year, there seems to be no time to just sit back and thoroughly enjoy the holiday season. Even spending quality time with friends and family also requires considerable effort to plan, prepare, and accomplish.

When the celebration and the fanfare end, it feels like the whole season went by too fast, without me having the chance to savor the whole Christmas experience. Nevertheless, Christmas still holds a special place in my heart. Despite the excessive consumerism of buying gifts, the over saturated presence of candy canes, Christmas trees, gingerbread houses, and Santa Claus, Christmas will always be my favorite holiday to celebrate, even above my own birthday.

As I grew up from adolescence to adulthood, my view of Christmas has evolved throughout the years. During my youth days, I saw Christmas as a chance for me to receive the material things I wanted. Christmas gave me hope that maybe I will actually get a Super Nintendo or a Playstation. But much to my disappointment, I did not get those things that I truly wished for.  As a young boy here in Canada, my family and I lived quite meagerly. My mother and father’s collective mindset was to live practically and to live within our means. Toys and video games were beyond our means at the time and so, they were considered to be luxuries that were not needed.

When I finally joined the working world and was able to afford the material things that I wanted, I took upon myself to acquire those material things that my parents were not able to give me. Everything that I can get under the sun, I sought and bought to my heart’s content. This shift in lifestyle also changed my perspective of Christmas. Since I can just get any material things that I want by myself, I no longer had the same longing that I had when I was younger. It left a void in my being in how I looked forward to the Christmas season. To fill this void, I yearned for the complete and unadulterated Christmas experience. I wanted to enjoy the joy and the warm feelings one can experience in Christmas that I would see in the media, and the movies. I looked to friends, families, and even the church to fulfill my idealized version of Christmas. Yet, I was still left disappointed most of the time. Christmas in the real world seemed like it was just not good enough.

At one point in my life, the Lord in His grace let me experience a desert season. Like an artist with a vision, he chipped away all the strongholds I have held on to. Whether it be my career, my spiritual pompousness, love, acceptance, and everything else that still had on my grip, he removed from me until all I had left was Him. It was only then that His Gospel made sense to me in a deep and wounding level. Jesus, who created the heavens and the earth, who deserved all the glory and praise from His creation, greatly humbled Himself by becoming that of His creation, a man. Even as a man, he lived in abject poverty being one of lowest in society. In Isaiah 53:2-5, one of my favorite passage in the Bible, it reads;

² For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
⁴ Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

Jesus’ birth paved the way for the cross where He will be subjected to torture and humiliation, and He did this for what? So that He can save an ungrateful and selfish sinner like me whose only concern is what he can gain in this life. Instead of worshipping the Creator and what He had done for my sake, I worshipped His creation, trying to fill the emptiness in my life that only He can fill.

Christmas is important to me because, like a treasure hidden in the field or a pearl of great price, I have received a gift that cannot be surpassed by anything this world can offer. My idealistic view of Christmas has now been superseded with the joy and the hope of reuniting with the Savior who had willingly died for me.

As we spend time with our family and friends this Christmas season, my prayer for the church, is that the joy that only our Lord and Savior can give through His Gospel, be experienced by everyone; and that even when we are in a state of euphoria or despair, the hope that we have in Jesus will still give us the joy that exceeds any emotion or any circumstances that we are facing.

God bless everybody and Merry Christmas.