Talk BRO. BO SANCHEZ: WE’RE in Talk 3 of our series Dear Prodigals on the book of Deuteronomy. And we’re going to read this passage together -- it reveals God’s heart. Moses was giving like a History Class from Chapters 12-16. What we’re going to talk about today is it is as though he’s giving a Worship Seminar. In Deuteronomy 11: 13-15, we read: Imagine that we are now living in an agricultural society during ancient times-- no modern massive dams, no modern irrigation systems, everything dependent on rain. And so, here is the promise of God, saying the rain is going to come: “…the early and late rains—so you can bring in your harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil. He will give you lush pastureland for your livestock, and you yourselves will have all you want to eat… Be careful to obey all my commands so that all will go well with you and your children after you because you are doing what is good and pleasing to the Lord your God. Today, I’m going to preach this message: God is committed to your well-being. He really is. And this is an original vision of God. You go to the first book of the Bible, to the first story, God’s Creation: God wanted us to be in Eden and He wanted us to eat from the Tree of Life and He wanted us to eat the abundance of the Garden. And the reason God has given us these laws and commands is He wants us to be brought back to the Garden. My dear friends, this is God’s plan: He wants us back in His Garden. How many of you want to go back to the Garden? A representation of all that is good. He wants your well-being. Now, I need to say this because people misunderstand: “Bro. Bo, really? God is committed to my well-being? Bakit hirap na hirap ako sa buhay? Why do I have problems? Why do I have struggles, and difficulties, and storms, and earthquakes, and tragedies in my life? Why did I lose a loved one? Why am I going through so much hardship financially? Bakit nahihirapan ako sa trabaho ko? If God is committed to my well-being, why am I not well? May I give you an answer? The Answer God is committed to your well-being, not your comfort. Chew on that. If you’re as old as I am, you have already accepted the fact that if you want to have well-being, you’re going to have to suffer… And if you have not yet accepted that, you’re going to be in a lot of distress because you’re going to have false expectations about what life is. God is committed to your well-being, not to your convenience. You’re going through a lot of inconvenience to experience well-being in your life. You can’t even become healthy if you won’t go through discomfort, and pain, and struggle, and suffering. You cannot even have

TalkI just want to set you up here for our speaker. John Ben Rodriguez will be coming up in a while and he’ll be giving the Talk on Finances. I’m a financial teacher. Yes. I’m a spiritual leader. Yes, I’m a preacher. But I’m also a financial teacher. Why?Something happened 20 years ago. So, I’ve been serving God for 40 plus years. And so, I was a single missionary. Serving the Lord. Poor. And happy as a single person, serving God for 16 to 20 years.But then something was happening in my heart. I was serving with fellow missionaries who were married already and have children. And they were struggling. Now, I knew that because they were my friends. We were loving God together. We were serving God. All out. But then I would look over my shoulder and I would look at my friends who were missionaries like me, and married, and there were times they could not send their kids to school. There were times they had to borrow money to put food on their table.And I was rebelling in my heart. I was saying, “Lord, this is not happening.How could You do this to Your children?”And I started searching. I began to realize something that I want to share with you right now.I always say this and you hear this from me a lot: there are two areas of life.The first area are things you can control. The second area are the things you cannot control. I always talk about that. And I always say that you have to be here in the area where you can control. Stay here. Don’t stay there. The moment you stay there, there’s going to be worry and anxiety. Yes, or no? Yes.You stay here in the area where you can control stuff.Now, what you cannot control, you surrender to God. Amen.What Can You Control?This is what I need to emphasize: What can you control?Effort. Work. This is what you can control.Your effort-- the planting of the seeds. The harvest is here. You don’t know what you will get. Whether you will have zero harvest and God wants you to keep on planting. Whether you will have a 30-fold harvest, a 60-fold harvest, or 100-fold. You don’t know.You cannot predict effect. But you can predict effort. You cannot predict harvest but you can predict planting. And that’s what you do. You work.You don’t have to be poor. This is my realization: That you don’t have to be poor. You can work.You can invest. You can teach yourself finances. You can learn. You can create multiple income streams. You can find ways to keep on planting and you do not know what’s going to happen here (in the area you can’t control), but you know what can happen (in the area you can control) by working and finding ways.In that area where you cannot control, say, “God I’ve done everything I could.You take over.Say, “Lord, take over. Prosper the work of my

TalkI want you to touch somebody and tell that person, “Get ready for a blessing.” We continue our series on What Matters Most and today we are going to be talking about health, about Fitness.   And maybe the question that is in your mind is:Why would The Feast, a spiritual community, talk about health? I mean Why?And my answer is: Why not?You know, Everybody, say this with me: Everything is connected.People ask me, “Bro. Bo, how can you continue to do all that you do?You know, you’re very busy, as in the Ministry, you’re busy also with your businesses, you try to be the best husband, you try to be the best father—you do all sorts of things. How do you do all that you do?And I respect those three words: This is my answer: Everything is connected.My spiritual life is the foundation of all that I do. But you know what?My relationships are interconnected. And the reason I’m successful in other areas of my life is my relationships are working well. At least I try my best that they work well.But my physical health is also a close cousin. It’s like a foundation. WhenI nourish my body, when I get enough sleep, when I drink enough water, when I get enough sunlight, when I move and I exercise—you know, all of those have ripple effect. My physical health ripples toward my spiritual life, my ministry life, my business.One more time, Everybody, say, Everything is connected.And when you read Scripture, you’ll see one of the things that just pops, so strongly and beautifully, is that there is no dichotomy, there is no separation, there is no division between the body and the soul. The perspective of Scripture is that body and soul are one—in fact.Your Body Is Not BadOne of the misconceptions that we need to correct – in our expectation, in our mindset, and in our perspective—is that when we die, we will be like Casper, the friendly ghost.And that we will be ghosts in Heaven.But if you read Scripture, you find that we will actually have a body. And it will be a glorified version of this. It will be perfected, glorified.You will have a body. You know, a body is not evil. The body that you have now is not bad.It is not evil. It was made by God. And we need to take care of it. We need to love it and nurture it so that we can love Him more and serve others more. No, it’s not our priority. No, we do not worship our body.We worship God alone. But this body is a servant that serves God. And so, as we listen to this talk today, I pray that you open your heart and I pray na sana batukan ka ng Panginoon—I pray got will hit you on the head J-- if you are not loving your body.This morning, I was shaving and then I shaved my favorite mole and it bled profusely. And

BRO. JC LIBIRAN: Thank you, Doc Didoy.This is a special part – Usapang Family… Yes, we are the Light of Jesus Family but we are a family of families.We want to discuss various concerns, common experiences, but also possible we may not discuss all, but what’s beautiful about simply chatting, it’s not necessary to be complete. What’s important is we start the conversation and we are inviting to continue that, when you go back home, or after this Grand Feast, it’s an opportunity for us to just talk.We have a special guest, a family psychologist and she has written numerous books, and definitely we will be blessed by her, Dr.Michele ‘Ichel’ Alignay. Let’s give her a round of applause.We also have Bro. Bo Sanchez and Sis. Marowe. We also have with us Dr.Ryan Capitulo, and Bro. Lep Sumera.Let’s begin right away. Sis. Marowe, share with us biggest secrets, lessons, in your 25 years of a happy and healthy married life with Bro. Bo.SIS. MAROWE: Actually, they are not secrets because we have been very open and sharing what we do in our marriage… Twenty-five years… in two days (July 11) BRO. BO: We thought of giving you a lunch treat but PICC does not allow bringing in food here…Secrets to a Happy MarriageSIS. MAROWE: So, maybe, I’ll give three secrets/lessons…1.      Deliberate Date.First, definitely it’s having deliberate couple time together. Because in our case, most of the time, we’re always together in the house—because he works from home, and I used to homeschool.So, we’re just in the house.But I’m sure couples experience this—when you do your daily living you tend to forget how to be loving, little irritations would be there.So, of course, if you really set a deliberate time to just be together – whether just a simple dinner, or watching a movie—it’s your time, something sacred for the two of you. That has helped our marriage be what it is today. Correct, Bo?BRO. BO: Well, I’m not irritated with you…SIS. MAROWE: Oh, I’d been digging out letters… you do have irritations about me before. I’ll reveal those… Joke. JSo, first, have your weekly dates. If weekly is not possible, do it twice a month—just have that date. It’s important that you have it. To reconnect with each other and really talk—not through cell phone.2.   HonestySecond is, of course, honesty. I say honesty because we always say we should not be mind-readers. Honesty is what we really recommend for couples.I know, it’s romantic, like “If he knew what I wanted…” Isn’t it, we have such fantasy… Ladies, we all know very well what we want, but when you are asked, if we like this or that, you say “No.” But gusto mo pala—you want it.Like, your husband would say, “May I go to this place…?” And you would say, Sige, okay, you may go…”But you really don’t want him to go there…Tell It as It IsSo, that’s No. 2. You really have to tell each other what you like, what

Talk EVERYBODY, say: My role today is not to give you the talk but to introduce the entire series. It’s a mini-series. There will be five messages in this series and the series is called What Matters Most. My wife Marowe and I, we’re very busy preparing for the celebration of our 25th Wedding Anniversary. And so, there was this one day, we were chatting, and you know, we were listing down the many things we have to pay for. So, we have to pay for the venue, and okay, we had to pay for the food, catering. We had to pay for the clothes. We have to pay for the sound system. We have to pay for the photos, and we have to pay for the video, yes. And as we were going through the list, my wife reached out to me and said, “Love, sorry. So expensive.” And she added, “Let’s not do it anymore, this celebration. I told her, “You like, let’s just elope.” And then I looked at her and I said, “Sweetheart,” —three words: “You’re worth it.” Everybody, say those words: “You’re worth it.” Life is about knowing what matters most. Life is a values game. Please understand this: How many of you want to live a fantastic life? A life for God. A life of love. A life of dedication, commitment, and blessing. If you want those, please understand, you’ve got to win the values game. You’ve got to know what matters most. I repeat this: If I want to know your values, I could, if I wanted to, you know, maybe give you a piece of paper, and say, “Can you write down your values? What are you thinking are the top things that are most important to you? Can you?” I probably might get a few answers and that might be helpful. But they might not be accurate. Because it’s so easy to fool ourself. You want me to know how I can know your values? All I have to do is look at your decisions. Because your decision every day is a product of your values. All I have to do is to look at your daily decisions. Actually, if right now, you’re listening to me, and you’re having a difficult time making a very important decision in your life, my bet is, my suspicion is, you’re not clear about your values, about what is most important to you. What’s Important to You? Decision is all about value clarification. I remember my mentor—his name is Joey Bonifacio. He was talking about this: How many hours do we have in a day? Just in case you don’t know, it’s 24.:) And so, Joey was saying that every day, there is a train that passes in front of you with 24 box cars. And when a box is in front of you, appears in front of you, that box car is empty. And so, what we do, is we fill that box

Talk TODAY, we are ending our beautiful Talk series called Wilderness: Lessons and Inspiration form the Book of Numbers. For Talk 8 today, we will be preaching the message Discern God’s Heart. Yes, discern God’s heart. And we shall read from Numbers 26:3-4: At the very start of our Talk series, we learned that this book is called Numbers because God asked Moses to number the Israelites and conduct a census. Now, this Bible passage we just read is about the second census that they conducted. Because many died already and they were preparing to enter the Promised Land. And they were preparing to divide the land among all the tribes of Israel. Question: Do you want to receive blessings from God? Yes! Then be counted. Be part of the census of Jesus followers and receive your blessings from God. Let us glorify His Word once more: Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet And a Light unto my path. We glorify You Lord God for Your Word. Hallelujah! Yes, as I said a while ago, the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness— oh, it was very dangerous, very difficult. And so many died. And yet, after doing a second census, they counted more than 600,000 Israelites who are about to enter the Promised Land. The book of Numbers is actually teaching us that we should regularly count. We should regularly make census of all of our blessings. Because the problem with many of us is this: We focus too much on the negative. We fail to count our blessings. We fail to make a census of our blessings because we focus too much on the negative incidents happening in our life— sickness, death, failures, disappointments… And when we do that, we fail to see the blessings. Yes, of course, we will experience trials and difficulties. Because with our trials, God is pruning us. Pruning is difficult. Pruning is hard. Pruning is stressful. But pruning is essential. So that we will bear more fruits. So that we will be stronger. So that our faith in the Lord will be greater and stronger. So, when you are diagnosed with diabetes, for example, God is pruning you. Perhaps, God wants you to live a more healthy and more active lifestyle. When you get buried in debt because you are a shopping addict, perhaps God is pruning you so that you will be a steward of your financial blessing. If you got separated from your spouse, for example, God is pruning you. Perhaps, He wants you to, you know, look at yourself again and change what needs to be changed. Count Your Blessings So, my dear Brothers and Sisters, make this your practice: Count your blessings. Focus on the positive in your life. Do not focus too much on the negative and you will realize you have so many blessings that you have taken for granted. In our study of the book of Numbers, we learned from Chapters 1 to 25