Author: Ting Trongco

Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Let it be done unto me according to thy word). The posture of humility and obedience, trust and love.  Mary’s fiat, to me, is a reminder of the right posture of the heart in following God’s will.

With the right posture we guide ourselves to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We lead our heart to do the right thing regardless how we feel. With the right posture, we find courage to make things right and with the right posture we overcome fear because we are assured of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and with that we too, like Mary, can say Yes Lord, your will be done.

God has ways different on how we do things. I will not say sometimes because most of the time the human mind cannot grasp the wisdom of God. We ask why. Why not me and him, him and her, why not now, and so on…..Things happen and we do not understand why. We do not understand because we are very impatient in waiting for the wisdom of God behind what is happening in our lives.

We are all guilty of this at some point in our lives but let us be reminded of the invitation to grace in the book of Isaiah, an invitation to all of us to trust and be receptive to the Lord. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways are my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

God loves EVERYONE, not just those who believe in Him. He blesses everyone even the non-believers. So for the believers they will be quick to give God the credit for every blessing. For the non-believers they recognized the instrument God used. We must choose to be patient, to be understanding and most of all to care. Let us show Christ to others by allowing ourselves to be the hands and feet, be an instrument of God through our Christian Life Program.

If we define freedom as doing whatever we want, we will never understand the true meaning of having one.

I have driver’s license, it means I am free to drive in Calgary but if I intentionally do not stop on a red light, not only will I be penalized for violating the traffic rules but I will also be causing accidents resulting injuries to people and to myself. The same thing goes if I am playing. If I am part of a women basketball team playing against another team and I take the ball and run away from the court, my team members and the rest of the players for sure will vote me out because that is not how the game works. What I am trying to say is freedom has boundaries too not to limit us on what we can do but for us to experience happiness, true happiness. We have to start seeing it this way, unless we do, we will be stuck on our worldly definition of what freedom is, to do whatever we want.

The Fence

There was a large group of people. On one side of the group stood a man, Jesus. On the other side of the group stood Satan. Separating them, running through the group, was a fence.

The scene set, both Jesus and Satan began calling to the people in the group and, one by one – each having made up his or her own mind – each went to either Jesus or Satan.

This kept going. Soon enough, Jesus had gathered around him a group of people from the larger crowd, as did Satan.

But one man joined neither group. He climbed the fence that was there and sat on it. Then Jesus and his people left and disappeared. So too did Satan and his people. And the man on the fence sat alone.

As this man sat, Satan came back, looking for something which he appeared to have lost. The man said, “Have you lost something?” Satan looked straight at him and replied, “No, there you are. Come with me.”

“But”, said the man, “I sat on the fence. I chose neither you nor him.”

“That’s okay,” said Satan. “I own the fence.”

In our lives there are 2 influences: Good and Evil. Part of us being in CFC-Singles for Christ is to prepare and teach ourselves to make better choices when we are confronted to choose between good and evil. We do our part in winning the war. 

I acknowledge the world and how hard it is to live in it where we experience and see lots of non-loving things but God provided us what we need to live in this world. We must learn to see the hands of God behind what is going on in our lives. 

Most of the time we choose to sit on the fence because we choose what is easy and convenient over what is true and right. When we are tempted to go against God or tempted to sit on the fence, let us remember who we are to God. 

One evening, after supper, the kids reminded the dad it was dessert night. So the dad asked Josh to please run downstairs and get the popsicles (yes, popsicles for dessert:) from the freezer in the workout room. Joshua started to whine and asked why does he always get to ask to do things to which the dad answered, because I trust you.

Joshua is always asked to get the extra milk, fruit, yogurt because they really do trust him. That he will close the fridge/freezer door properly. Aside from of course training him to be independent by doing simple things like these.

We will learn the will of the Lord for us only when we allow Him to change us by changing the way we think.