We would like to apologize for not being able to broadcast the worship service last September 9, 2010 due to internet connection problem. The broadcast will resume next Sunday.

“We are overwhelmed by your warm welcome, we are truly blessed!” Pastor Roxy and the rest of the USA team said over and over again. Months of communication and preparation between Ikthus Operation Care Ministry (OCM) and New Hope at the Hills Church, California finally realized. August 14, 2010 marked the day for a Comprehensive Medical Mission. Our less fortunate brethren from various barangays of Bacolod and Outreaches came to seek medical services. Several doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmaceutical companies came to offer free medical services for adults, pediatrics, Optometry, Dental, Ob-GYN, ECG, FBS and many volunteered to donate blood in partnership with the Red Cross. Drug Store Association of Negros assisted in our Pharmacy and ABS-CBN Bantay Bata Foundation got involved in the Children’s Evangelism. We are truly grateful to our dedicated volunteers who showed so much passion in doing the Lord’s work. At least 1,200 were blessed with these services and ministered. Praise God!

As early as May of this year, New Hope at the Hills Church headed by its Missions Director Pastor Rox Leonidas, a Bacolodnon signified to partner with us on this Medical Mission. They sent financial support, medicines and their Missions Team came over to provide manpower assistance. They came to bless us, but in truth they will return to the US more blessed because of the experience.

We at Ikthus would like to thank the New Hope ate the Hills Church for this partnership for God’s greater glory. We will keep in touch and encourage one another that the Lord may find us faithful as we fulfill the mission he has called us for. Glory to God!

CLICK TO VIEW MEDICAL MISSION PHOTOS

Lately, Bacolod (or the whole province of Negros and neighboring islands to be exact) has been experiencing power shortages reaching critical levels of blackouts, and electric-generators could not dearly withstand the said phenomenon. Due to this, we deeply apologize for the delayed posts of video streaming, and even failure to post such sermons in this site. We are currently working to make things in order, but most likely – praying for electrical miracles to happen.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

Still, all glory to His Name!

May 9, 2010 / 10 am / Ikthus North

CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO

Are you a Trapped Monkey?

“Where your heart is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus has redefined treasure to mean “that in which I take my greatest delight and towards which I devote my greatest efforts.” His interest seems to lie in what treasure means to us and what effect it has on us and, particularly, in what it does to our capacity to see…

We are like the monkey with its hand trapped inside the coconut shell, clutching a fistful of peanuts. The monkey wants freedom and peanuts, but cannot have both. It must leave the peanuts if it wants to get away. As a matter of fact, it will lose both the peanuts and the freedom if it hangs on too long.

And we are caught in a similar bind. We long to be free of earthly entanglements to serve God in the Spirit. Yet we cling to something more elusive than peanuts. We may only want enough. But without realizing it, we redefine enough again and again with the passage of time. Others of us want to have as much as we can get. So we are full of darkness.

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24 RSV). Mammon refers to money or to material things. Jesus is talking here as though money were a person, a master controlling the lives of his servants. In the ancient world it wasinconceivable that a slave, or for that matter a free servant, should serve two masters… In practice, I find it impossible to be equally devoted to two major goals. One or the other will become nominal and cease to capture my imagination and my fiercest efforts. We cannot devote our hearts and our allegiance equally to God and to mammon.

This terrible principle means that so long as mammon fascinates us, God does not number us among those who serve Him, however much “Christian work” we do. We were created to have one center. To try to have two is to be miserable and to enjoy neither spiritual things nor material. It would have been far more pleasant had our consciences never been awakened so as to leave us free to love mammon and mammon alone. As it is we are doomed to dissatisfaction until and unless we slash ourselves free from cords that tie us to mammon or those that bind us to Christ.

The choice of a truly regenerate Christian is a simple one… if your hearts is with the Lord Christ and if you are ardently concerned with the interests of his kingdom, the reasons for the conflict between material possessions and heavenly treasure will become clearer. The more time you devote to meeting Him, worshipping Him, learning about Him, serving Him, the less time you will have available for what is of no value.

(The following excerpts were taken from John White’s book: “Money Isn’t God”)

“Scars”
Tito Manny’s Darkest Friday

(Resurrection Sunday)

All of us have stories to tell about our own pain. We have been hurt once, or even until now, that left a deep mark in our souls. Take Manuel Songco for example, or tito Manny for us. From 1995-98, his credits went higher than his accounts – in short, he was in-debt that he even tried the option of giving up. For three years he was “in bondage” to paying for his credits, he said in our interview. When he came to know the Lord, grace became the hammer that broke the chains into pieces. And God did not just control his bank accounts – God signed up as Boss of his life.

I picture out the resurrection as a beacon of hope from the viewpoint of the cross. The slashes of whips on His back, the rips on His skin, the mark of the spear, scars from the nails… all these were but scars to Jesus’ body. Nothing more than just symbols of the crucifixion – the cross that was hailed useless in killing the God of the universe. Like that of tito Manny’s story, the cross that he bore, became that crown that he now wears. He is now enjoying the grace of God – a new life debt-free and full of God’s abundance. The scars that he has right now are mere marks of a painful past, of the cross that he once  carried. But looking at the resurrection, tito Manny knew – and so can we know – that these scars could not hurt us anymore. In fact, the story would teach us that scars are signs that we’ve moved on. The most painful and darkest Friday of our lives, through the lens of Resurrection Sunday,  becomes Good Friday.

He’s Alive! And this gives us all the reasons to rejoice!

Tito Manny loves playing Lawn Tennis at Forestside and is now breeding chicks as a hobby (no, not girls… but baby chickens). Tito Manny, or Manuel Songco, is loving his ministry as the OIC for three services in Ikthus (Ikthus South, Ikthus North 5:30 Service and Ikthus Handumanan).

by Twister Jover

Love is Never Just a Valentine Thing

The thing happened last September, and it was not even  Valentines day. But, who cares? Love doesn’t just happen on Central February. Love is an everyday event. And September valentine, is worth remembering.

Pastor Andrew flicked his magic words back into action as he got the youth’s undivided attention, speaking of “love”, and proving that the young people would lend an ear to the hot topic. Opening to the book of Hosea, Pastor Andrew dusted off a Biblical equation of weird love: prophet + prostitute = peculiar love story. In a rather striking parallelism to the Bible’s perspective, he draws out what God had in mind: a stubborn love for stubborn, rebellious lovers. “God” plus “us” is equals to a love story like no other. Valentines on September dawned on our brains. I was hiding my red, long-sleeved polo and a redder cheek every time pastor got his words right to what would hit me like an arrow to the heart. I was unfaithful to love’s faithful agenda. Yet God, in all His splendour, painted the “red” to that questionable love.
God called Hosea to marry an unfaithful prostitute. I believe that this was just an easy task compared to what God asked Hosea in the third chapter – “to win her back into the arms of love.” Pastor Andrew cheezily stretched the point of describing that love. In the book of Hosea – Gomer, Hosea’s promiscuous wife (forgive me), had a very cheap price tag. You can buy her just as buying bread! And it was of course, a big slap-in-the-face for the holy man Hosea. He was to become the laughing stock of the town, the spotlight in every Israeli Teleserye of comedy. God reminds Hosea though, that his love for his wife will be a picture of God’s very own love story.

“The Lord said to me, “Go, show love to your wife again, even though she loves another man and continually commits adultery. Likewise, the Lord loves the Israelites although they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.” Hos. 3:1

Hosea, being faithful to the unfaithful, becomes more like God on the process. Pastor Andrew’s sermon to more than a hundred young people last Friday, served as a reminder that every relationships we have with the people around us should be a revelation of God’s amazing love.

“So are you a Gomer, or a Hosea?” the question echoed in every small group’s ear last Friday. I told my group that in front of God, I had my share of failings. I was a Gomer – a rebellious, unfaithful lover. But the youth group gave a tap on the shoulder – “God will always be faithful though.” This becomes the very reason why you and I should do the same.

original title: September Valentine
9-19-09 Youth Update

The Prodigal Father

Rebuilding Relationships 1

All I could remember was the fact that it was raining heavily. It seemed like heaven was angry; Ondoy has just punished Central Luzon – and I’m about to get a beating far worse than the slaps of raindrops knocking on the glass pane of the jeepney. I was fifteen minutes late to meeting my father, and I know – he doesn’t like to wait that long. “Pa, it’s raining angels and demons…” I rehearsed all the excuse-lines I could ever think of.

Then, the jeepney stopped.

I needed to get-off from the vehicle, and now the thought was growling together with the thunder: “prepare to meet thy doom Twist…” I paused and gave a thought – what about ‘fighting-with-the-ninjas-from-pluto’ excuse.

For reasons far more logical than that excuse was the fact of my broken relationship with my father.  I prayed, but no matter what words I utter, I was still – yes! – late. The moment I opened the door to his office, he gave me that stern look – “you’re late Waw…” Yep, I know. Deep down inside me, I was muttering – “ninjas… from Pluto…” But I couldn’t speak it all out. I could’ve blamed him for what happened in the family. “I’m sorry.” Things suddenly bolted me into perspective. As fast as the lightning outside were the words of Jesus- “LOVE…” what?! In fact, what Jesus stressed on the fifth chapter of Matthew was ‘loving the unlovables.’ And that was the message that pricked me that rainy day. And it was very agreeable to say that it’s never that easy. It means that I should love the father who left us and broke that chain of trust in our family. It means that I should forgive the inexcusable act he did. It means that I should rebuild that broken relationship I had with him. Jesus’ words were like twitching my ears, saying: “if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the sinners (or tax collectors) do the same?” (Mat. 5:46 NASB) What kind of love is Jesus talking here? It’s not the love that Confucius tells us: reciprocal love. It’s in fact the contrary – love those who doesn’t even show you love. Why? ‘So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’ (v45). The stress here would mean – “so that the world may know what kind of love you have in the Father.” It’s a love far more different than the ‘love’ we hear on the radio, see on the movies or merely just the fluttering of the heart. It’s a different kind of love. It’s a heavenly love that rebuilds even our cracked, earthly relationships. It is a love that bridges even the widest of gaps: holy God to sinful prodigals. The question got me thinking: if God loved me so much, why couldn’t I show that love to the unlovables?

I kissed him on his cheek, “Pa, God bless…” I realized then that, for a Christian, being not able to love and forgive is not the period to a destroyed relationship. It still ends up like Jesus’ love: a force that rebuilds. There was a question mark on my dad’s face. I smiled. “Love you, son.” He smiled back and slipped those words right before I could utter any word. He then bade goodbye and left the office to his men.

Somehow, I went out of his office feeling ‘free’ from all the hassles of the storm. I looked outside – it wasn’t raining anymore. Heaven was smiling.

icm