What I Learned Most at the Recently Concluded Camp Meeting

These past two camp meetings, I have
been assigned to work with the children in a separate class. I spent the mornings and the afternoons teaching them scripture songs, memory verses, Bible stories, and the basics of our fundamental beliefs. This meant that I missed four of the five daily plenary sessions, since I am able to attend only the morning worship and the evening session each day.

But this has not hindered me from receiving some very important reminders from the Lord. One of them I learned through a mistake I made while teaching.

I was doing a lesson on the Judgment and the Book of Life, how we need to get our names written in that book so that we be judged worthy of eternal life. I was trying to make it easier for children to understand the requirements. I told them, “If you are good children, doing good things, helpful to mother and father, kind to other children, obedient to the commandments, your name will be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Right? Right?

The children all agreed. “Who wants to go to heaven?” Every hand went up. “Then be good kids, alright?”

A resounding yes!

I was happy with the attentiveness and the response, contented happy. I was doing my job as well as I could. I smiled from the inside. But then I glanced at my presentation notes, and in a split second I knew I made a grave mistake.

Of the way to be registered in the Book of Life, my notes said, “Receive Jesus into the life.”

Had I mentioned that? Had I told them that they had to have Jesus in their lives so they could be obedient, kind, good kids? Had I told them they couldn’t do it on their own? Had I told them Jesus died to make it possible? Had I told them how to receive Jesus?

Just then, one child or another began to be distracted from the class and in the next split second I was losing their attention.

So I let the thoughts slip by. I had them sing songs, memorize their verses, and color in their activity sheets. I drilled them on the sanctuary furniture, and on which things are holy and which are common. They really enjoyed that. Then we prayed and I let them go to their parents.

But today, more than a week later, it still bothers me.

So this is how it happened. This is one of the reasons why when I look around me and inside me, I see “adults” who have difficulty grasping that we are not saved by our own works, that it is the blood of the righteous Son of God alone that can cleanse us from sin, that only through Him can we have righteousness, that good works apart from an intimate, saving relationship with Him (if that is at all even possible), can avail nothing.

It is what we have been taught even as children.

God help me. God help every Sabbath School teacher all over the world. God help every parent and teacher. God help the children.

What Moves the Earth?

Early this morning, as I made my routine visit to our vegetable garden, a little prayer kept running in my mind: 

"Please, Lord, help the seeds to sprout. I have no life to give them but You are the Source of all life."

I knelt low and checked the radish and pechay seedbed, and lo and behold, some seeds have already begun to sprout. One here and a couple there. Amazed and grateful, I drew even closer and saw the teeny tiny crack in the teeny tiny seed, where a white-yellowish stem had come through and struck root in the soil. And then the thought:

“But I buried that seed!” Not very deep, of course, but deep enough to cover it entirely. Now the seed has emerged to the surface, having pushed away the soil above it.

I look around at all the vegetables and flowers and the big trees. They all started this way and have continued this way - moving the earth by simply reaching higher and wider and deeper.

So what moves the earth, really?

In the garden today I realized: growth.

The development of all our powers is the first duty we owe to God and to our fellow men. No one who is not growing daily in capability and usefulness is fulfilling the purpose of life. In making a profession of faith in Christ we pledge ourselves to become all that it is possible for us to be as workers for the Master, and we should cultivate every faculty to the highest degree of perfection, that we may do the greatest amount of good of which we are capable. Christ’s Object Lessons, 329.2

Lessons the Weeds Taught Me

“Laluma paglimpisa (Make the blade go deeper),” my mother said as she came up behind me weeding in our vegetable garden. Almost immediately I recognized the life lesson in her words.

My mother is one of my two gardening mentors, the other one being my father. Between the two of them, I feel like a little child playing in the dirt: Most of the time, I get dirty, I don’t know what I’m actually doing, but I have fun anyway. Besides, gardening is a wonderful time to be alone, work my underused muscles, meditate, and learn something new.

Whenever I come to the garden, I always think, “This is my heart.” As I struggle to break the ground with a hoe, sweat streaming down my face, I tell myself how I must persevere and be patient because God is at least this patient with the fallow ground of my heart.

So when Mama said I should make the blade go deeper, I knew that the lesson for today was to allow the Word of God to take a deeper, closer search into my heart, and take sin out of my life by the roots.

The work of sanctification is not just about the dos and don’ts. It’s not just about correcting the behaviour that shows. When I’m only cutting away the weeds at the surface, it won’t be long before they come up again because the roots are still there and very much alive. The blade must go deeper. The wellsprings of the heart must be cleansed of selfishness.

Truth must reach down to the deepest recesses of the soul, 

and cleanse away everything unlike the spirit of Christ…. 

                                                -EGW, Our High Calling

The thought also led me to remember a tip that a good friend told me a couple of years ago: “When you’ve pulled out the weeds by the roots, make sure to cast them away from your garden. Don’t leave them there because they have a way of taking up root again.” This was also very true in my spiritual life. How many times have I “decided” to quit a bad habit only to come back to it later because I kept the uprooted sin close? Countless.

It’s like the time I decided to never read fiction again, but kept the books in the shelves anyway. There would be times when I’d look at the books and think, “there was that part in this one that I particularly liked.” And I’d take that book out and scan through it, find the part I was looking for, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading through to the end of the book.

Cast the uprooted weed away.

So I strike deeper into the ground, pull out the weeds with my other hand and throw them on top of a growing pile to be taken away later.

These are what I was reminded of today among the peanuts, eggplants, talong, sili, and what-nots. These are the kind of lessons I learn in the classroom that my father had enclosed with a net fence – itself another object lesson, another story. But that’s for another gardening day. Today I was only beginning to prepare the soil for planting.

I got dirty, I had fun, and I learned what I ought to be doing.God be glorified.

Whose Daughter Art Thou?

All day today, questions brewed and boiled in my head. Mostly Whys and Hows, but also Whos. I prayed to the Lord for answers, and through tonight's devotional I realized that I already knew the answer from a lecture I heard at PYC a couple of weeks ago.

My devotional tonight was about the Old Testament prophecies that pointed to the then-coming Messiah, and how they were all fulfilled in Jesus. Now this wasn't really directly related to my questions. But it reminded me to get to know my Saviour even deeper.

That was it. To know my God.

Just like that I was reminded of Genesis 24, the search for a wife for Isaac.

Among Rebekah's other qualifications, this was what struck me the most:

Genesis 24:23-25
...and said, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in?
And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor.
She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.

Rebekah knew whose daughter she was. She knew her place in her father's house. She was confident not only of her identity in her father, but also of the kind of provisions her father is able to offer.

Whose daughter art thou? Whose daughter am I?

I have a Father in heaven who loves me. I am precious to Him. He desires my good. He is able and willing to provide for my every need, including the building up of my character. He gave Jesus for me; He gave Jesus to me.

I can only be confident of who I am when I come to truly know my Creator and Father.

And in this-- in this I find my quest and my rest.

Treasuring Up Truth

What's your most recent memory verse? Or perhaps more to the point, when was your most recent memory verse?

Most of us grew up with "God is love" and "Jesus wept" and "In the beginning God created...". And then what? What happened after Cradle Roll, Kindergarten, Primary, and Junior Sabbath School?

Well, the sad truth is that most of us stopped memorizing new verses, and therein lies our weakness.

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11

When the devil came to Jesus in the wilderness, he could not make Him yield no matter how he lied, prodded, or attacked. You see, Jesus was armed... with Scripture. They were not just passages memorized for the sake of memorizing, of course. They were principles committed to memory and lived out in the life. They were truths hidden in the heart and flowing out in words, deeds, affections, thoughts, desires, choices, and ambitions.

The point is that Jesus took the time to acquaint Himself with His Father's words well enough that He knew them by heart and could recite them from memory - the way a warrior spends time practicing with his sword so that when the enemy comes, he could defeat him with it. Mastery takes time.

And it's time we ought to be spending committing God's word to memory.

None but those who have fortified the mind with the truths of the Bible will stand through the last great conflict. 

The Great Controversy, 593.2

Most people just shrug and say "I'm too old to memorize anything." If you're one of them, there's a promise in Inspiration for you!

Let the more important passages of Scripture connected with the lesson be committed to memory, not as a task, but as a privilege. Though at first the memory be defective, it will gain strength by exercise, so that after a time you will delight thus to treasure up the words of truth. And the habit will prove a most valuable aid to spiritual growth. 

Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 137, 138.

Here are some ways I personally find effective in memorizing Scripture.

1. Understand what the passage is saying point by point.

2. Make the passage personal by finding applications in your own life.

3. Read the passage over and over again. Out loud, too.

4. Break it down into smaller sections.

5. Write it down.

6. Cover certain parts/words as you memorize. There's also the option to write down only the first letter of each word as memory prompts.

7. Sing it. There are lots of Scripture songs out there, especially on common passages like the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, etc. I love Scripture songs, and I'd be happy to share my collection with you. Message me.

8. If you have a smartphone or pc, download a scripture memorization app and spend more time on it rather than on Facebook. It will be time more meaningfully spent, I guarantee it. The app I currently use is called Scripture Typer, and is available for both ios and android.

9. Share the passage with a friend. Teach it. Discuss it.

10. One that must go with whatever method you use: PRAY. Nothing is impossible with Omnipotence.

So there. Happy memorizing!

P.S.
What methods do you use? Share them with us in the comments.

Our Leafy Kindergarten Ebenezer

So this quarter at church, I am back to teaching Kindergarten Sabbath School. To be honest, I was hesitant at first. I mean, it's been four years! But now I thank God for the privilege.

We started a little late this quarter, but we're definitely making up for it through our study of the Beatitudes. This particular subject is perfect since the adults are also studying EGW's Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing.

So what we're doing is going through the Beatitudes one by one, focusing on "Be-Attitudes" as opposed to "Me-Attitudes". Our learning device is a beehive with bees labeled according to the beatitudes. I am going to share the materials that we use for class on this blog in future posts. For now, allow me to share with you what really made me happy today.

The bigger girls (who had already moved on to a different class) excitedly met up with me after lunch to help decorate the tree branch from which our beehive hung.

We cut leaves from japanese tissue paper to stick on the branch made from felt paper. These are not ordinary leaves, mind you. On each leaf, the kids wrote or drew the things they were thankful for, like family, food, rain, sunshine, and the privilege of prayer. Even the smaller kids pitched in. While we worked, we talked about our blessings and how the trees around us should always remind us of our faithful Provider and Friend. As many leaves there are on trees are the blessings we receive from God, probably even more! We must remember to develop an attitude of gratitude.

I was truly touched when one of the students drew a girl and wrote "Thank you for our teacher who teaches us about Jesus."

That prompted another leaf from me.

This tree will be our ebenezer for the quarter. Needless to say, I had a happy Sabbath. =)

January 28, 2017