Light and Grace: The Jesus Biography

I almost titled this post, "The Book I Was Almost Scared to Read". Philip Yancey, the author, of The Jesus I Never Knew, said in the book, "No one who ever meets Jesus ever stays the same." and a part of me knew that even before I started to begin reading. 

Light & Grace + Free Stuff: Belief Busting Affirmation Cards

Yesterday, I had the chance to carve time and finish my Digging Deep journey (which I HIGHLY recommend if you wish to overcome a barrier in your life and if you are ready to move on to bigger things) and I had come to realize the power of affirmation and the different ways to declare it. I am aware of affirmation concept before but only yesterday did I got convinced of the truth and science behind its ability to turn around negative beliefs in our system. They are SO many ways to declare affirmations and one of them is the visual way. I'm guessing that it is the most effective way for me so I'm starting with that. I tend to rewrite my affirmations and I come up with different ones regularly so I thought of making an editable template for my wonderful declarations.

Of course, you get to join me, too, if you wish! Download my freshly-made printable 'Post-It' size affirmation cards on the button below. Each card has a typable field that can contain 4 rows of text (please make sure you have Century Gothic font when you use this) and a gold glitter motif. The sparkly look makes me smile by just looking at it! Tack it (I love using old earrings, check out the image above.), tape it, leave it everywhere it can regularly be visible to you. It would be awesome to use your own handwriting for your affirmations, too. 

Important Affirmation Writing Tips!

Digging Deep suggests that affirmations should be on the present tense (hence the words "I AM" on the cards), should contain positive words (no "don'ts" or "can'ts"), should feel real and believable and should be specific.  

If you wish to dig more in this entire powerful process, join us in the tribe here!

Light & Grace: A Quick Note on Forgiving

Yesterday, a friend told me a story on how a person deeply hurted his feelings by shaming him in front of others. I am honored by the openness extended to me and stories like this resonate with me because I, too, know how the force of hurt can affect my life. I wish to share with you something powerful from one of my sheroes, Joyce Meyer. I got this my from her daily devotional plan on my inbox today:

"I want to encourage you today to bless the people who have hurt you by praying for them, even though you may feel hurt and irritated by them. When you pray for people who have hurt you, it's a choice you make. And forgiveness is based on your decision - not a feeling. But there's healing in that for you. "

If you are hurting today, I'd like you to know that you are not alone. You are lead by a God whom you can access for strength, comfort and liberty.

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 Cor 3:17

Light & Grace: Record, Share & Preserve Your Story

I am leaving Manila again soon and one the things I'll surely miss is my late night dinner/coffee with my friend, Ella. Luckily, I came across with the wonderful StoryCorps mission, which is to honor and celebrate life through listening. Their work actually focuses on American stories but I thought it's a really good concept that we can easily do for a few minutes.

At StoryCorps, recording a story need not be in a form of sophisticated video production. Any form of recording medium will do. In our case, it was a simple mobile phone laid on the table. Just remember to do some simple preps. You also don't need a celebrity or a high profile person around. You can interview your grandparents, parents, neighbor, or any person who has a story that you believe needs to be preserved.

Here's my very casual interview with my friend, Ella, at a coffee shop by the highway. Pardon our very loud voices. We can barely hear each other because of the passing vehicles.  I got too excited during the interview, I answered the questions, too. We're able to answer all the questions in the first 11 minutes. (The rest of the recording is just our extended chat. :)) With that short time, I wish you can imagine how fun it is to do this exercise with your own friends and family.

My Ella Interview by schemaholic

Light and Grace: Listening to A Former Atheist

He used to be an unbeliever. He seeked answers and found them. Clive Staples Lewis or more popularly known as C.S. Lewis did not just write popular classics like The Chronicles of Narnia but also important legacy books on Christianity. It got me very interested how this intellectual giant found his way to enlightenment.

Mere Christianity is a book originally based on his compiled speeches on wartime radio broadcast on Christian faith at BBC aired on 1940's. I imagined myself living on that time, turning on the radio and listening to this brave man talking about humane behavior, hope, faith & other virtues as news of death and war are aired side by side his program. It must have been so strange then to hear his speeches but really, it is not much different from our time now. We still need to know these things. We need to hear voices like him.

Light and Grace: The Audience of One

Whenever I talk about my audience, clients, and readers, I can't help but vividly imagine these lines that give me goosebumps everytime:

"I never did find a buyer for the book. Or the next one, either. It was ten years before I got the first check for something I had written and ten more before a novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was actually published. But that moment when I first hit the keys to spell out THE END was epochal. I remember rolling the last page out and adding it to the stack that was the finished manuscript. Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I’d been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath."

-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

You do your best. You do everything humanly possible. Yet no one shows up. No one buys your products. No one ever gets interested in what you do. Only those who understand the audience of One survives. Only those who can do it for the audience of One will be satisfied.

Blogging for the audience of One.
Running for the audience of One.
Cooking for the audience of One.
Homemaking for the audience of One.
Singing for the audience of One....

Speaking your truth... doing what you know in your heart you should be doing... sending out to the world your message in its authentic form... believing that your audience of One never fails to show up... and He is pleased.

He is always pleased.

Light and Grace: Click & Give

I wish to conclude my posts on tithing with a suggestion on how to do it right at your own home. The article that I mentioned before, answered the question where to send tithes.

Answer: "Give to the spiritual family that feeds you spiritually..."

Light & Grace: On Tithing Time & Why Scriptures+Mornings Go Together

Just when I thought I already got the whole idea of tithing, I discovered a new (to me) concept called "tithing time". Me and a friend were on the topic of Liturgy reading when a question about what time of day are we able to fit in this habit came up. I told her that whenever I wake up earlier than my baby, I'm able to read the Bible in the morning. Then we shared an embarrassing laugh on the reality of the enemy force being so strong in terms of distraction (Wait, another interesting Youtube video!) that this simple act is pushed till night time, or worse till we forget about it.

Light & Grace: How I Finally Understood Tithing

I learned about tithing on my first job. A part of the office's profit is alloted for our company tithe. I remember hearing mass with my officemates and my boss and putting our hard-earned (the firm was small and struggling at that time) money envelope in the contribution bag. But really... I didn't get the concept of tithing. Why 10% Why give? Why my earnings? I didn't understand it enough for me to continue the act after I left that group.

Light and Grace: Coffee Talk: Bible Versions

I'm so excited! I finally figured out how to extract clips from my voice memo library. Me and my good friend, Ella, usually record our talks over coffee/dinner because we feel it's important to have a log of our learnings and growth. All talks that I'll be sharing in this site is posted with her permission.

In this clip, we talked about the different Bible versions because I told her about my confusion on the topic. I got myself a King James version thinking that's the only official Catholic version (I can't remember where I got that idea.-_-) but had a hard time understanding it.

Bible versions by postsbyjen
Note: We are sharing what we know but we do not claim to be experts on the discussed field. Feel free to join the discussion if you wish to impart something. Audio clip might not work on a mobile version.