When I was asked to write this blog, I decided I wanted to write something straight to the point and easy to read… If you would like to see that part of my message please skip to page 18… Just kidding! =D Please read on…

God made us to be many things. One thing we can be certain of is that God made us with many talents. The bible commonly refers to talents as gifts. If you want to take the word in a literal sense, a gift is the transfer of something without the expectation of payment. God literally gifted us special innate abilities and gave us the capacity for achievement and success. But like any gift, it’s not given with the expectation of payment, but with the expectation that it will be used properly as to benefit us as much as it is to benefit others.

For example, let’s say someone gifted you a book. It was given to you to read was it not? But let’s say you use it to simply decorate your bookshelf, or to hold up your camera so you can do your corny videos to post on YouTube, or you toss it in a drawer, or you accidently broke off one of the legs on your bed so you use the book in lieu of a new bed leg so that your bed doesn’t tilt. Or perhaps you’re short and you like to sit on a chair with a pillow, and to add some height you put the book under your pillow. You know you may have done one of these things! I know I have done or witnessed all… heh…

Now, what if that person who gave you the book walks in to find that you have misused this book or didn’t even read it at all when it was meant to benefit you! TSK TSK! How do you think they are going to feel? Perhaps that book was on how to appreciate!

This is exactly how God feels when it comes to our gifts, whether it is a physical gift or a spiritual gift. The Bible explains to us in 1 Peter 4:10-11, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. [And in three part harmony say] Amen.” What God wants us to understand is that our gifts are not meant to be hidden or misused. It is meant to expand His kingdom in service to others.

The parable of the talents in the bible is a great example of this. You know the story right? (If not, then please read Matthews 25:14-30.) The servant with the one talent didn’t even do anything with what he was given except hide it in the ground. At least if he had put it in water, the chemicals from the metal of the talent may have done something good for the underwater habitat… National Geographic =D

But no, he did not! And not only did his master call him lazy for not handling his talent like he was suppose to, but called him WICKED! (Cue psycho music) He was basically called an evil bum. And not “bum” in the poor sense, “bum” in the lazy sense- lethargic, sluggish! -_-  Sad isn’t it?

So, if we are indeed a gifted people, what are we doing with these gifts that God has so graciously bestowed upon us? There is an array of physical and spiritual gifts that can be used for the good of man-kind and to glorify God. So, are we using our gifts to simply benefit ourselves? Does not 1 Corinthians 14:12 tell us to excel in gifts that build the church? This is where our gifts are intertwined with our calling.

You see, whatever your gift is, if developed properly, it can become the very essence of what God has called you to do. Many of you have already learned this. If you sing, then perhaps God has called you to be a worshiper. If you’re a poet, then perhaps God has called you to use your grand slam poet skills to influence others. And little by little, as you take a hold of the calling God has placed in your life, you begin to deploy yourself into ministry.

[This is the concept of the Fine Arts Ministry: Discover, Develop, Deploy. Discover your gift, develop your calling, and deploy your ministry.]

Now, I would like to tell you a much known secret [oxymoron alert] about ministry. The driver of ministry should be LOVE. What value is it to us that we say words at the mouth but feel nothing at the heart? How can we share the love of Jesus if we ourselves are not seeking it? In 1 Corinthians 13:2 it says, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” We can put on this big show and talk a lot of words, but without compassion and love how can we bring deliverance? Unfortunately, in today’s world, there is more emphasis on ministry rather than the love of Jesus that is demonstrated in His Word. Is His love not the greater calling?

If there is anything that you remember from this blog let it be this: the reason why we work in ministry has to be for the love of Jesus.

In conclusion, let us not sing another word without letting our soul be stirred first. Let us not preach another sermon without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Let us not compete for position when we are all one body. Let us not look down on others and think we are holier than thou because God gifted someone else the ability to draw and yourself the ability to speak. Instead, let us seek to be a generation that strives to leave the imprint of Jesus’ love on the hearts of people. Let’s allow ourselves to feel anguish not just concern, for the people who are lost in their own ambitions as well as those who are lost spiritually. The late Pastor David Wilkerson once said, “If it is not born in anguish, if it had not been born of the Holy Spirit…  Until I am in agony. Until I have been anguished over it… all our projects, all our ministries, everything we do… [is lost].”

“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” – Romans 12:9-11

 Never forget that you are talented and special, and you are blessed!

May the Lord bless you today and always!

In Christ’s love,

Deborah Feliciano

District Fine Arts Coordinator

Dear God,

I have really been complaining about my singleness ALOT! I know and I am really sorry about that. I just haven’t really experienced your fullness of joy in this specific area of my life and that is completely my fault. I don’t know why it took me this long to get it but I think I got it now. It’s not about envying the couples around me and telling you to hurry up. It was really about changing my perspective. It’s really about talking to you about my singleness. I somehow always thought that things would be so much easier if I were in a relationship. I don’t know what made me think such a crazy and totally false assumption. I guess it was me, just looking at everyone that I know that’s in a relationship and how easy they appeared to live life, as though they had not a care in the world. I know that’s totally untrue and I was so blinded by my incorrect math formula of me being single = alone. God I know that there are many areas in my life that you have mercifully had the patience to teach me to rely totally on you. Heavenly Father, today I ask you to teach me how to enjoy my singleness. I want to experience the fullness of your joy in this. I have to admit that I’ve been going about my singleness the wrong way, but today I choose to make a turn around. I will try my very hardest to no longer complain about being single. But Father I know that I cannot do this on my own strength but I know that by your strength I can. Lord, I have decided to throw away my erroneous equation to let you do the math. Because I know that you +me= best relationship EVER!!! God teach me to totally trust that you have this area totally in your hands. God you know every one of my needs and I know you will not give me garbage. You have my best interest in mind. Thank you for being so very thoughtful. I love you and I don’t mind waiting on you. Let me say that again.. I don’t mind waiting on you. Please continue to mold me. Do what you must, I am yours. I want to be a better believer. Please give me a Christ-like mind so that I could have godly thoughts. Teach me to be a better leader and a way better servant. Abba please give me the patience to wait on you. I know you are saving the best for me, so make me the best for the best. I want to have a firm relationship with you before I get into any other kind of relationship. You are awesome! I love you so much. Thanks for understanding and helping me understand.  Amen

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need. This is a promise and God keeps His promises. Let’s not take the easy way out, let’s stop settling and let’s believe that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all we could ever ask or think. And this definitely includes the right person He has chosen exclusively for you.

Maybe you have been feeling the same way, I would love to hear about it. Please comment below with your thoughts or questions. Did you know? You can also email your prayer requests.

- Mayra Mendoza

Truth is that you don’t realize God is all you need until He is all you have. It was New Year’s Eve 1999, when the doctors told my family that my father had 3 months to live. I was only 12 but even then, God heard my cry. I prayed, “God, if you are real, save my father”. Three months later the doctor’s diagnosis extended another 3 months, and to them, that was the max. But God had another plan in mind. From the deathbed, God lifted up my dad, He brought salvation to my family and peace to my home. God showed me that He was always in control. That He does bring healing and restoration to the broken. It was sweet victory.

Fast forward to 2008, this time doctor’s said it was cancer. For eight years I was a witness to God’s miracles, signs and wonders. God made my father into a mighty man of God. And then in January 2009, my miracle died. I never knew this heart of mine could hurt so much. How could this happen? Why me? I mean, I prayed, I fasted, I read my Bible, I was active in church and I thought I was living as right as possible. I felt so confused, so hurt, so alone, so sad and totally broken. I was daddy’s little girl, this was not part of the plan. My dad was supposed to walk me down the aisle, help me raise my children. The pain I felt was so debilitating that I had no strength to pray or praise.

I knew God to be my dad’s Healer, but now it was I who needed healing for my heavily broken heart. I am not strong, not at all. But I learned to rely on every Word of God, every promise He had spoken over my life. I knew that the God who made those dry bones in 1999 live again, was the very same God who would never leave nor forsake me. I have since learned and am continuing to learn that the joy of the Lord is my strength. That He is my strong tower, the Rock on which I stand. He cares for the widows and orphans. He is my Heavenly Father. Abba!

I now know what it is to rejoice in sufferings because it strengthens our faith. I’ve learned that life is so short and so, we must make the most of it. When we get put through fire, it’s because God is perfecting the work He began in us. He is making us as pure as gold.

I thank God for the process, because through our present sufferings, God is unveiling His amazing glory that is within us. And beloved, from that glory, we will keep moving from glory to glory! That’s a mind blowing, soul shaking, and breath taking glory!

Know that God understands your pain way better than you think. He sent His Son, Jesus, to pay the price for our sins. He will meet you right where you are. If you are hurting and broken, know that God is healer and He is making your faith in Him stronger than ever! There is no pain too deep that His love can’t reach! And know that you… yes you, are His child. And God does not abandon His children ever! So whatever it is that you’re complaining about, the trial that you are going through, that pain and suffering you’ve been enduring, know that all of that is bringing the GLORY out of you!!

To Christ be the glory forever and ever,

Amen

I was so excited that I waited in front of the TV for our president to make the announcement. I stood watching a man with white bear talked about things he was not sure off. Then Mr. Obama came to the microphone and said “Osama Bin Laden is dead”. I rejoiced for the news and kept hearing the news hours after President made the announcement. I could not sleep. I was happy like the rest of those young people celebrating in front of the White house. I looked outside my window to see if any neighbor was outside celebrating to join them.  I was proud to be an American. “United States’ victory indeed” I posted on my Facebook.

But then the Holy Spirit brought conviction in to my life.  You see, I was still upset by the harm done to us many years ago; I had still not forgiven them. And as a Christian I still have so much to learn.

The following day I pray and found myself praying for the Islam community and went as far as praying for Al Qaeda, for their hearts and their salvation. Yes you heard it right, I asked the Lord to save those that had harmed us. At the end of my prayer I asked Jesus to forgive me for my blindness, as I, like many other Americans wanted the blood of a person that injured our families, economy and the way of living of this nation.  I had never in a minute thought about praying for Osama’s salvation.

Being a Christian for many years I thought I was following God’s second commandment to us. “Treat others like you want to be treated” and indeed I was very far from it.  As a sinner I ran towards the arms of Jesus and he did not asked for my blood, he gave me his blood to cleanse my sins. And if Jesus did this for me, who am I to asked for someone else’s life. My flesh was rejoicing for the death of a man, but the Holy Spirit was in going through sorrow, because once again we might have lost someone that did not have Christ in his heart.

Jesus thought us to love our enemy and he showed it when he greeted Judas with a kiss and called him “friend”. Although Judas was a man that walked with Christ, saw miracles and experienced the living word, he still chose to sold Jesus for a couple of silver coins. Anyone would have wanted revenge on this man, a man who is now the epitome of betrayal; nevertheless, Jesus greeted him with open arms.

Be thankful because we serve a merciful God, a God who does not worry about repaying but about forgiving.

In this National day of prayer I will get on my knees and pray. Pray for those that have not encountered Jesus Christ and accepted him as his savior. I will pray for our missioners who are fighting everything day to spread the love of Jesus Christ. I will pray for our U.S. soldiers, for their protection and rapid return. I will pray for our governments. And I will pray for the Muslim communities and the Islamic extremists that they get the opportunity to hear the voice of Jesus Christ….  as I once heard it.

Eddie Zaldana

The best way to examine if God’s love is everything in my life is to evaluate whether or not your life choices or thinking pattern is consistent with the love that you are trying to submitting to.  For example, in the movie “Furious Love” (which I highly recommend you watch) one of the persons being interviewed said “God flexes His muscle to show how powerful He is by dying on a cross”; and that’s wow awesome; we could run around shouting Amen at every stranger that walks by until the cops are called in to arrest you; but it does not mean we really get it.  God says I’m powerful by loving; He references this by saying in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”.  But if my definition of power and strength and authority is to shout at someone or to physically dominate a person or develop a psychological advantage over the person and exploiting that person for my benefit then I have to start recognizing a disconnect from what God is defining as power and strength.  There is a possibility that we may be wrong and real power and real authority and real strength may be birthed out of love, His love.

If we examine the kingship of Jesus, He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; and when we think of a king we think of someone in a throne, someone we come before and tremble because at any moment he may order the guards to kill me; or someone who has an oppressive rule that I can’t do anything about.  But Jesus being king; leaves His throne in heaven; and I’m not Mr. heaven expert guy but I do know this; when you create the massive universe we live in and you chose to come down to one of the smallest planets in one of the smallest galaxies in one of the smallest solar systems and you chose to live in that planet as a homeless person (I’m sorry I haven’t found the verse in the bible that talks about Jesus’ bachelor pad) that says a lot about the type of King He is.  Think of it this way, imagine you willingly saying I am going to become a cockroach and live among them, but even that can’t compare to what Christ did by choosing to come down from heaven.  Yet Jesus comes down to live among us so that we may have eternal life and not perish.  Yet again our definition of what we perceive something to be is totally different from God’s definition of that very thing.

God’s love should be everything in our lives; I believe the reason why we struggle to understand the things of God is because if you examine it from an intellectual perspective you’ll be lost, but if you examine it through the eyes of God’s love you’ll understand what God wants and why and even if you don’t you will find yourself trusting in the Lord and knowing that He is in control and that He has reasons as to why you do not need to know what is going on and it is just best for you to trust Him and not screw things up by trying to understand them.  Proverbs 3:5 teaches us to lean not on our own understanding.  When you serve God and you lean on your own understanding you tend to miss the point of what He is trying to do.  People who do this tend to spend a lifetime justifying everything; you will ask if something is a sin or not; and if you really enjoy doing the sin you will come up with a form of justification that will allow you to keep doing whatever it is that you are doing.  But really who cares; when you love God and surrender to His love and trust in Him you allow His heart to enter into your life so that suddenly your obsession will not be a reality TV show, or church, or the opposite sex, or the instrument you play; your obsession will be God and doing everything in your might in your power in your strength to love the God that has eternally loved you.  The bible tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind on several occasions.

When loving God is everything your interactions with others change, suddenly a perverted joke or offensive joke stops being funny and starts being offensive; because seriously, there is nothing at all funny about a homeless dude, or a starving kid, or some sexual content joke that is degrading, or the way someone looks or the insecurities that you are exploiting with every joke and making that person feel worse about themselves.  If and when you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, the Holy Spirit (God btw) dwells inside of you, which means that your life should be a reflection of God’s love to all around you because God is love (1 John 4:8).  So instead of trying not to “sin” you try to love God and in loving God you begin to understand what God wants from you and you stop focusing on what not to do and eventually you realize that the only understanding you need is of God’s love because you then trust that He will take care of everything else, I think Matthew 6:33 says this best.

When God said “Let us make man” (Gen 1:26) what He was creating was the person who would be God’s representative clothed with authority and ruler of this world.  Just as God loves us and cherishes us and does everything for us and came down and died for us; we must understand that our purpose is to represent God here on earth and the way God is represented is through love.  You know what is also kind of interesting about this passage and this is a side note, that the language of dominion is very similar to the language of rule in Gen 3:16 when it says that the man should rule over the woman.  A bunch of us dudes completely miss the point and take on the oppressive content of what a king was and what we define strength and power is and completely oppress women.  Except that God tells man that he’ll have dominion/rule over the earth and the animals, meaning that it is his responsibility to take care of the earth and the animals; the way man should do this is through love not by exploiting the earth the way we have and caused the many issues we are dealing with on earth today like the extinction of animals, global warming, etc. There is a possibility that the earth is just simply reacting to how horrible we treat it.  So maybe just maybe and I don’t have the super explosion 5000 bible which speaks to me and tells me exactly what God is really fully trying to say and draws an actual picture for me.  But maybe God creates a similarity here to show us that we guys have a responsibility to take care of the females in this world and not develop an oppressive rule over them, or exploit them for our benefit.  As His representative we should model our “rule” over them after God’s “rule” over us and we should lay down our lives for them, love them unconditionally, treat them as the daughters of the most high God because by the way it’s what they are.  There may be a very strong possibility that the females in your life (and I’m talking friends and strangers) and the girlfriend or wife that you might have may react to this love kind of the way we react to God’s love and that is by loving Him back and doing everything we can to have a hold of this love.  So maybe the key to your relationship might just be to honor her and love her instead of exploiting her and oppressing her.  Females react to what we give them; if we love them they’ll love us its actually not too difficult of a concept to understand; we’ve just messed it up by not thinking along the lines of the way God thinks and we have oppressed them by misinterpreting what God meant by “rule over them”.  Not to keep on elaborating but this similarity is really seen in Ephesians 5:23 when men are called the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, and last I checked Christ loved us so much that He came down from heaven to show us His love, and maybe just maybe as the head of the wife we may be required to love as Christ loves.

As God’s representative in this world we must model our lives after Him, our authority and rule and power and strength should be centered in His love.  Evaluate your intentions and reason for doing things, evaluate the things you want out of life and always ask yourself if you are being driven by God’s love, and if you are not then what are you being driven by?  I love Psalms 37:4 when it says that He will give me the desire of my heart, so many of us take this verse and run with it saying that God will give me the car, house, boat, mate, and insert whatever selfish desires we have in our hearts; and when we do not receive them 10 minutes after praying for them we say that God lied, His bible is false.  What if the desires of your heart became the desires of God’s heart?  God has an unstoppable plan and I do not know about you but I would much rather be a part of God’s unstoppable plan than to be part of any other plan.  When we make God’s desires our desires evangelism would not seem as scary because you’re afraid or ashamed; donating to needy children who have nothing becomes a way of life for us, maybe not going out to eat so often so that you can save and sponsor a child may not even seem like a sacrifice but the norm.  Could it be possible that you may become a heck of a whole lot stronger if you just committed to being God’s love to this dying world?  Are you compelled by His love?  If not what are you compelled by?

I’m not writing this to judge anyone, just wanted to share my views on God’s love and the power it has.  Evaluate your life and ask yourself if you are driven by His love or if you are driven by something else.  Whatever the answer is I recommend asking that question daily because we all fall short of the glory of God and it is something we should evaluate daily.  I’m pretty sure God will lead you into a life full of Him and His power and His strength, which is simply a life full of His love.  Everything about God is love, His logic never seems to make sense to us because we view things with our own sinful perspective, but when we see things through God’s eyes we are then compelled by God’s love.

Be blessed.

Jeremiah Ramos

I urge all young people who are considered followers of Christ to come together in this wonderful ministry which will help us every day closer to God. Many of us think that prayer is a gift for some people but do it for ALL of us who love Christ and for that every day we want more of it. The truth is that if we have no communication with God we will not have vision to achieve what He promised. With God all things, without him nothing. Without prayer, there is no relationship!