And man, did they receive! (Acts 2)
Today was also my personal Pentecost, as I received with open arms a veritable thunderstorm of His love and messages. The clarity of the experience was much like the neon-light revelation three years ago that pointed me unmistakably to where I was being called at the time through Luke 14:12- to the banquet of "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind," which transformed my life forever. And as I shared a long time ago in a previous journal, it takes incontrovertible evidence for the skeptic in me to actually get what's being Said. I also just realized that it's been almost three years to the day (June 6, 2004) that I received my calling to serve, and five years (June 2, 2002) since I first answered the One calling me to Him.
True to form, today's messages were brought to me, Sesame Street style, by the letter "P," from my Panginoon:
PRESENCE. POWER. POSSIBILITY. PURPOSE. PRAISE. PROPHECY.
PRESENCE (Alan's addition to my "P's" when I shared this with him earlier today; I wasn't "present" to it at the time!). During Mass at today's Feast, the priest-celebrant said that it isn't God who holds back on what He gives us - it is our willingness to receive the continuous torrent of His blessings that keeps us from getting them. Today what I got was that to receive the fullness of His abundance, we must be totally empty. More relevantly, we are truly open to His generosity and His communication when there is nothing between Him and us; when we are cleared of all our internal conversations of guilt and unworthiness (the "umbrella" we open that keeps up from His rainstorms of love) - for He has already redeemed us and washed us clean by His blood, and continues to allow us to draw near to Him through His immeasurable Mercy (from which we may constantly draw through the Sacrament of Reconciliation). It is then that we can actually be present to His word for our lives.
POWER. That said, and being fully empty and present to Him, His message landed loud and clear: "the power you wield is My power revealed." In my weakness, He is my strength; and truly, His power in me releases me from fear and enables me to allow His glory to shine forth. And, in receptive emptiness, I received yet another revelation: it is His message when it is a message that gives me power. Thus, perhaps the most powerful message I received today is that He sees me as my -
POSSIBILITY. "You are able to see others as their possibility because I see you as yours." Wow. I really GOT that. He, indeed, created us - and sees us - as no less. To rub it in a little more, worship began with All Things Are Possible, and continued on a bit later to The Potter's Hand: "Teach me O Lord, to see all of my life, through Your eyes..."
PURPOSE. I'm supervising a powerful program this coming weekend that I've promised to be nothing short of mind-blowing, earth-shaking, and extraordinary. Even more so than my own experience of that program last October 2006. What I have at stake is the future of the Philippines and the full self-expression and freedom of the Filipino people. And I brought this program to today's celebration and lay it the foot of His cross. The confirmations I received over the course of the Feast, from the messages in worship and during the talk that followed, to actual physical evidence and the Word itself in Isaiah 60 cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be coincidence, even to someone like me who needs more than the usual amount of proof (lawyers!):
"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.
"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
"Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you;
your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm.
"Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy;
the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come."
Yup, the Philippines will never be the same again after this weekend. I PROMISE that. And thus it shall be. :-)
PRAISE. I'm going to be doing a lot of that over the next week and into the weekend, in everything I do. I'm blessed that my partners in my possibility are also present to the miracle of praise. For in praise, there is presence, power, possibility, and purpose. Really :-)
PROPHECY. I missed most of Jon Escoto's talk because I took my sweet time over a snack, but the last part of it was even more confirmation of all of the above. Prophecy, according to what I got from Jon, is creating out of one's speaking (hmmm...sounds familiar, heh heh). And SO IT SHALL BE. At the end of his conversation, he bade us to prophesy to our spouses and children (I have none of the above - yet!), to the people around us, and most importantly - to our country. He said that too many "negative" (in my language, "disempowering" would be more accurate) things we say about the Philippines keep it where it is. Prophesy that it be blessed and be the First World, God-loving, God-abiding nation it is meant to be. How much more confirmation did I need?
A first-world Philippines, powerful (without disempowering anyone else, and instead empowering every other nation and people), free, and fully self-expressed! I prophesy that it shall BE sooner than any of us think. Praise God :-)
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