Temple Invasion

"Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you?" (1 Corinthians 6:19 NLT). Paul wrote these words to counter the Corinthian sex obsession. "Run away from sexual sin!" reads the prior sentence. "No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body." (v.18 NLT).

I am a man whose testimony publicly is clean from sexual stains. My words are clean, my house is clean, my relationship is securely pure, and from a public standpoint I can pass as a "livable" temple of the Holy Spirit.

BUT no. I am as filthy as everyone else. As dirty as the adulterer and as malicious as the maniac in the street. The Bible also says that if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery with her. How sad, that I am a guilty sinner in thought, and in standing before God.

Recently, when the power failures happened in the whole of Luzon, I was forced to go to the mall and spend the time there to cool off. I was alone, and I wanted to watch a movie. So after parking, I was surprised to see that almost everyone else had the same idea. The mall was brimming with beautiful and attractive ladies, from teenager up. I found myself thinking I was a single man, and I played with the thought of girl-watching, since my wife wasnt around. By the way,my wife and I do girl-watch and its quite different when Im with her, I sort of appreciate the beauty of ladies,and I thank God whenever I look at my wife, because she is very attractive indeed. BUT, when I am alone,I cannot girl-watch, because I suddenly become somebody else. I was constantly rebuking myself telling myself, "What's wrong with you? You're supposed to be filled with the Spirit, thinking about things of the Spirit..."

I really need a smack in the head. Get myself focused on the things of God, and not on the things of this world. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, i should not sin against my body...

Ravi Zacharias' answers to atheists

Steps to debunk Darwin’s Evolution Theory regarding the Existence of God.

1. However you section physical reality, you take the physical universe as you see it, however you slice it down to its minutest form, the fact of the matter is you end up with a physical entity or quantity that does not have reason for its existence in itself. Ultimately, the physical universe reduced in any form cannot explain its own origin. It has to find its explanation outside of itself which means the FIRST explanation of the universe as we see it has to have something NON-PHYSICAL (Spiritual) as a first cause. So, you have something like a “haunted” universe without knowing what the FIRST cause is.

2. Next you come to the argument not from design but TO design. If you walk into a planet and come across a McDonald’s wrapper or letters of the alphabet, you immediately know that there is information there. Logic tells you that when you see information, you assume that prior to that information is a mind. You don’t just think that Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus accidentally came together, or the dictionary developed because of an explosion in a printing press. There is sequence to the whole thing. If you take just the composition of the enzyme in the human component, which is the building block of the gene, which is the building block of the cell, the possibility of the human enzyme coming together by random says Vic Ramsinky professor of applied mathematics in Cardith, Wales, the possibility of that happening by chance is 1/10 to 40,000!! That’s more than the number of atoms of the whole universe! It is, time-wise and mathematically impossible! So I say to you no.1 the physical quantity cannot explain itself number two, there’s intelligibility which assumes there is a prior mind… so the first case there something non physical, second case there is something intellectual, and

3. …third, in the history of society, human experience, and history itself you begin to realize that the moral issues, the social issues and just human intercourse, demands the explanation of a moral reality. So you have a FIRST CAUSE that is spiritual, a FIRST CAUSE that has a mind, and a FIRST CAUSE that needs to explain morality. You take these three struggles, and pause with me for a moment here, there are four fundamental questions in life: ORIGIN, Meaning, morality and destiny. You take these four questions, and these three explanations needed, and only GOD is big enough to explain this universe!

QUESTIONS from an atheist student regarding the existence of God:

Student: How can you talk about the existence of an all- loving and all-powerful God when there is so much moral and gratuitous EVIL in the world? Doesn’t that strike you as contradictory?

Ravi: Stay with me for a moment, because I have questions for you: When you say there’s such a thing as evil, aren’t you assuming there’s such a thing as good?

Student: Yes, I accept.

Ravi When you say there is such a thing as good, are you saying there exists a moral law, so as to differentiate between something good and something evil?

Student: I accept that as well.

Ravi: So if you pose that there is a moral law, then you should suppose there is a moral LAW GIVER, but that is what you were trying to disprove and NOT prove!

If there is NO law giver, then there is no moral law, if there is no moral law, there is no such thing as good, if there is no good, then there is no way to define evil, so WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION?

Asking God How to Die

We often ask that huh? Many times I think of these morbid thoughts, as I know that our “time” is inevitable. Yes, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but we all have to die. Generally, we all dread the thought of dying. Some of us don’t, because we’ve accepted the fact, but we dreamily hope we die a peaceful death.

Why am I talking about this anyway? Well to begin with, I am surrounded by dying people, some have gone, some are going, and some are facing the certainty of death. I fear to lose my loved ones in a painful death, such as cancer, or cruelty, or in the hands of evil people. I pray that I don’t die of cancer myself! I often pray to God, in all of the ways of going, I would certainly like mine to be meaningful, not pathetic. I hate it when we die because of some drunk kid driving and runs us over. Or because we were too busy talking to someone on the phone we get run over by a bus. I also hate to die of sickness. I know its going to be painful. Hope and worth dwindles as you see people around you move on with life and you don’t make a difference anymore. I dread that.

I often envision myself dying for God, for His cause, or sacrificing my life for my country, for fellow men, or protecting my loved ones… all those noble ways of dying. And how we’re going to be remembered and honored on our eulogies. People might erect a remembrance of your heroism, or name a hall or classroom in your honor. And then we smile and say, that would be an awesome death.

But, as often as I forget my stuff when leaving, I am again smacked in the head with reality. I remembered how my mom died, how many great people in my life passed on, and their mode of death wasn’t as glorious as most of us would like. They died unexpectedly, in the prime of health, or with a sickness they thought they would never have.

Then God moved my heart and I realized IT’S NOT HOW WE DIE, BUT HOW WE LIVED. We cannot choose(well some of us can) how and when we die, but we can all choose how and when to LIVE for God. This made me stop thinking of having a glorious death, when we can live a glorious life! We can stop thinking of how many people would think I am a hero when I die, when we can be appreciated by helping people around us now while we are alive!

So, with that said, whether we live or die, our lives must be guided by the words of the Apostle Paul: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

O Worshiper: Shame on Me, Shame on You!

It has been ages since I last dropped an entry to my blog… in the recent events of my life, I went through a lot of suffering, challenges, trials, and to be honest I am not sure if these burdens are really through… and as to my other burdens, I know God has a plan to bring them all in to fruition, in His time.

Recently, I was faced with issues regarding priorities, personal dreams, and even comparisons to the success of others, which I selfishly thought I deserved more. Shame on me. Shame on me. Sometimes, promotions, successes, blessings of others make us feel uncomfortable, and to the extent we think we deserve it more than other people. Well, though I knew it, I believed it, I was smacked in the head for actually feeling it. Before I shame myself more, I thank God for putting me back to my senses.

One of my pastors told me regarding that issue was that God wasn’t concerned with my temporal success (in this world), but He was more concerned in how I reflect His Son. I put that in my wall post in Facebook, and instantly, a lot of my friends felt the same encouragement/rebuke from that statement. Putting my own life experiences into that perspective, I found a lot of errors in my life and how I worshipped God personally.

Bear with me as I bare my heart. Again, shame on me. Shame on me. I’ve written a lot of wonderful songs which I believe was impressed upon my heart by the Scriptures and by truths I’ve learned from God. Semantically, I can’t say they’re written by God Himself because that would equate my songs with the Bible! So, I safely say these songs were impressed upon my heart by the Scriptures and by truths from God. Going back to my point, I enjoy writing for God’s people when they worship, I enjoy writing for encouragement, challenge, edification, even rebuke, and in all honesty I desired God’s glory in all that I do. I know my heart wanted to glorify God more and exalt Him in all my music. That is probably why the church (at least my home church) loves the music I write for worship, because they’re all for God’s glory.

But in light of recent events, I noticed my heart began to change. Some motives weren’t right. Some plans were selfish. Some of my desires were for personal gain. In this blog, I want everyone to know my dreams and frustrations. My personal dream is to see the nations worship. Yup, until now I desire that, before I lay to rest I desire that to happen. The way I see this to happen is for me to be used by God to write music that does exactly what I wrote above. Being a University of the Philippines student, I desired for my country to be placed on the music map, so I challenged myself to write our own music that would be loved by many churches around the world. Not only did I desire to bless God, but the Body of Christ as well. Now, I prayed that the Lord would lead me to people who can help me record these songs He has allowed me to write, produce them, distribute them to many people/countries, etc, and that way I could somehow indirectly lead people into worship and realize my dream of seeing the nations worship God. But after many connections, many opportunities with local and foreign artists, I still am left with nothing but a dream. A very noble, Godly and spiritual dream in the onset right? Nay, I realized it isn’t. No matter how spiritual I make it sound, it is tainted with the single-lettered word: “I”.

I felt God’s loving rebuke as I was singing worship songs in my room this evening, I noticed something wrong in the right things that I do. I was more concerned with the new tuning my guitar had (open D tuning),and I was more concerned with my voice’s timbre, style, and even thinking of how the song would be LIKED by the people, how the musicians would enjoy playing this one, and how this would sound instrumentally.. while worshipping God(multi tasking!). That mood can only be allowed in creative occasions, when, though it is also worship, we as artists try to make a song-offering better, and more smoothly written, musically sound, and poetically consistent. Now, I want to make it clear that this isn’t the same mood when I wrote my songs…Exact opposite. My mood this time was: I know I can sound better, sing better, play guitar better, write music better, be a better musician than so and so, WHILE I WAS WORSHIPPING GOD! Scary. And I felt so spiritual too! (See, feelings and emotions aren’t the best gauge for worship) And then in my Bible reading after, I read this simple verse: "Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it."
Numbers 21:17

I saw that Israel sang when the Lord has done great things. They sang in response to something God has done. It was all about Him. Psalms 103 says “Bless the Lord,O my soul, and all that is within me,bless His holy name!”. But when I was singing tonight, I realized I was singing so that I could be deemed a better worshipper by other people, not by God. I lost sight of the true meaning of worship! It was FOR God! I sing to praise Him, not to be praised and appreciated by other musicians! And in effect, that’s all I can get if I had that heart: appreciation from “lesser” musicians. The Ultimate Musician (God) wasn’t at all pleased with my heart, much less my music. It was a mediocrity if sang/written with a selfish motive.

I know how easily I fall into the trap of the carnal body I have. I pray that my fellow worshippers would stop worshipping music, even their ministries, stop trying to reach others more than reaching God Himself, stop advancing our own bands, our names, our churches, our organizations in “His” name, when we know they are all tainted with the word “I”.

I know I am prone to fall into this category in a matter of days, weeks, so I seek for God’s grace and rebuke. But if you, O believer, should look into your own soul and find that we have the same troubles, same struggles, well, shame on you too. Shame on you. Wake up to the fact that it’s all for God, and that’s all that matters.