Closer

We continue our series on CLOSER, our study on the third book of the Bible—Leviticus.

Talk 8 continues unpacking the five Holiness Laws of Leviticus 18 to 20. Yes, they are Love Rules. And their purpose is to make Love rule.

Last week, we already studied the first group of the Holiness Laws—Laws on Sex.

     Talk 8 explores the other four groups of Laws.

 We continue our series on CLOSER, our study on the third book of the Bible—Leviticus.

In previous talks, we learned that Leviticus is all about laws or rules not meant to limit our relationship with God—rather, to draw us closer to Him.

To appreciate the rules, Talk 7 discusses ancient backgrounders on the rules – all pointing to the message: God Wants You To Live a Full Life.

One day, your drunk neighbour walks into your home with his muddy shoes and his untrained dog. 

He leaves ugly footprints everywhere and his dog goes to the middle of your expensive carpet and poops.

What do you do? Aside from cleaning your house, you must prevent this from happening again. 

So you call your neighbour and tell him, “You disrespected me and my house. 

If you want enter my house again, you have to follow my House Rules. 

First, you cannot be drunk. 

Second, you cannot bring in your muddy shoes. 

Third, you need to toilet train your dog.”

In Leviticus, God also established some House Rules. These are Purity Laws from Leviticus 11-15. Some people think these laws are to keep people out. 

But it’s the exact opposite. God sets up House Rules so people have a way of coming closer to Him.

Even if these ancient laws don’t apply now, what do they mean for us today? We’ll unlock their spiritual treasures in our Feast.

Have a fascinating Feast today!

May your dreams come true,

Bo Sanchez 

We continue our series on CLOSER, our study on the third book of the Bible—Leviticus.

Talk 4 proclaims the truth that without God in our life, we die. Thus, the title of Talk 4: God Is Our Oxygen

The talk also asks another question: How do I experience God? How do I receive His Presence? 

Welcome to Talk 2 of CLOSER, our new series about the third book of the Bible—Leviticus. As we learned in Talk 1, Leviticus discusses a lot of rituals and rules— which can be boring, so, not a few skip reading this book.

    But by studying Leviticus, we see that it is God who provided a way for us to get CLOSER to God, and if we want this, we must take time to study this book.

    Today, we‘ll talk about Atonement.

    We learn about this in Talk 2, titled Sacrifice Is Good. 

  Leviticus is the most unread book of the Bible.

Because it’s one of the weirdest. 

It has rules about what not to do during a woman’s monthly period. 

It has rules about not eating dinuguan and sugpo and alimango and talaba. 

It’s an entire chapter on bodily fluids and seven chapters on animal sacrifices. 

Won’t reading Leviticus be a waste of time?

But here’s what you can get from this very strange book: Behind the obscure artifacts of Leviticus, you get a peek into God’s heart. You can get an idea of what God wants for you. 

What does He want? God wants you to get CLOSER to Him.

We welcome you in our brand new and special mini-series “UNWRAP” and yes, it’s a beautiful take-off from our Exodus series, Special Delivery. Now that it’s been delivered, we open these blessed GIFTS in this season of ADVENT as we prepare for the coming of the Lord to be born again in our hearts!

Today, join me in unwrapping the GIFT of PEACE…

3 Ways to UNWRAP the TRUE GIFT of PEACE:

1st Way: Making Peace with Your Past: Learn from it (from Bitterness to Betterhood)

2nd Way: Making Peace with Your Present: Live every moment (from Busyness to Beinghood)

3rd Way: Making Peace with Your Future: Love His way (from Burden to Blessing)

  Welcome to the second to last session in our Exodus series. 

We’re in the part of the story where Moses went up to Mt. Sinai to talk to God, but he was away for too long, the Israelites got restless --which is really their fault because they didn’t want to join him.

During the entire 40 days that Moses was up on the mountain with Yahweh, the Israelites didn’t hear anything from him. 

Because of the news blackout, the Israelites began to feel uncertain, and thus, impatient.

Driven by their uncertainty, they assumed that Moses was dead. Or he escaped to Timbuktu and abandoned them. 

To them, Moses was a goner. And so, Yahweh was gone too. 

The Israelites tried to take control of their uncertainty by making a golden calf to be their god.

         The key message: Led God be God. 

Welcome to Part 8 of our Exodus series.

Before we dive into our Talk, let me share a business lesson.

I teach entrepreneurship in the TrulyRichClub, and one of the most common questions I get is, “Bo, my friends and I are going into business together. Do you think business partnerships are okay?” Usually, they tell me a story of how 3 or 5 or 8 friends are chipping in the money and also dividing up the responsibilities for the business.

The first thing I say? A business partnership is like marriage. 

Which means you must choose your partners very well.

You don’t marry on your first date. You must enter into a courtship stage where you get to know each other. And like marriage, you must work really hard to make the relationship work.

So I give them the bad news. Statistics say that within the first year, 50% to 80% of business partnerships fail. That’s horrible, right?

There are many reasons why they fail, but here are two of them:

o The partners have different values. 

o The partners don’t trust each other.

But here’s the good news. If the partnership works, it can fly to the moon. Because of this phenomenon called synergism. That means the Partners have a multiplying effect, where one plus one is not equal to two, but equal to three or four or five or ten or ten thousand.

I believe this can happen with your relationship with God.

  We continue our study of the book of Exodus.

Last week,in Talk 5, we talked about how finally, after 440 years of slavery, the Israelites are out of Egypt. 

The people of God are free. But their problem does not end there.

We’re still in Chapter 15-- but Exodus is 40 chapters long. And so, for the next 25 chapters, plus the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the story will be about the Israelites' long walk through the wilderness.

The big message of Talk 6 is God is in the Journey.

We continue our study of the book of Exodus.

Last week, we talked about how Pharaoh kept on saying “No” to God that he reached a point of no return—a terrifying possibility. 

God, in His mercy, accelerated the bad consequences of his hardness of heart by sending plagues, in the hope that he would change. The tenth plague—the death of the firstborn—was Pharaoh tasting his own evil. And that’s when he lets the Israelites go.

Today, we enter the second movement of the Exodus scroll: Israel’s journey into the wilderness where God tests Israel multiple times.

Welcome to the fifth installment of our mind-blowing series on the book of Exodus, titled SPECIAL DELIVERY: God Will Rescue You. 

The message of Talk 5 is: Revisit What God Has Done

Welcome back to our study of Exodus.

In Talk 1, we read how God rescued baby Moses from a watery death. In Talk 2, Moses struggled with an identity crisis. 

Today, in Talk 3, we’ll read how God revealed Himself to Moses in a very special way.

The key message of the talk is God Is Always with Me.

  Do you have a rejection issue? Like family, friends, or an organization, or even a Church you thought you belong to, not accepting you?

    This is what we’ll wrestle with in the second installment of our series 

on Exodus. 

    Talk 2 prescribes what you should do if you have a rejection issue: 

Embrace Who You Are.

We are already in Talk 8 of our Feast talk series, Blessing and Curse. Talk 8, titled The Lord Is with You, centers on the story of Joseph. 

Compared to all the other characters in Genesis—from Adam to Noah, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob— 

who at one time or another were sinful and ungodly--only Joseph was faithful to God—he was always with the Lord. 

Yet, he too suffered – exiled to Egypt. How come? 

        This is our question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

        Answer: The Lord is with you wherever you are. If the Lord is with you, you can bloom where you are planted. 

Your burden will turn out to be a blessing.

  We are already in Talk 7 of our Feast talk series, Blessing and Curse.

      Talk 7, titled Let God Win, centers on the story of Jacob who all his life was wrestling for blessings--fighting for those blessings on his own terms, 

and in the process, hurting the people around him.  

Key message of the. talk:  Instead of wrestling for your blessings, bless others and trust God will give you the best.  

Don’t chase after your abundance—His abundance chases after you. Let God win.

 We are already in Talk 5 of our Feast talk series, Blessing and Curse. 

Talk 5 is titled You Never Graduate from Trusting God-- 

because when it comes to trusting God, there is no future point in your life when you can say, “Been there, done that.” 

      There’s no such thing. Even if you’ve been following God for the past 300 years. Or you have four doctorate degrees in Theology from Rome. 

You’ll never graduate from learning how to trust God more.

Talk 5 gives the example of Abraham about his failures and triumphs in trusting God. 

  We are now in Talk 4 of our Feast talk series, Blessing and Curse, based on the book of Genesis. 

And this talk is particularly anchored on the story of Babel. 

Talk 4 points out that Blessing is so much bigger than money. 

Our biggest blessing is Life with the Blesser. 

And He designed blessings for us to scatter them.

The key message of Talk 4 is You’re Blessed To Be a Blessing.

This is Talk 2 of our series on Genesis. 

Talk 2 focuses on the story of Cain and Abel. 

Cain envied Abel and killed him. Yes, the root of the problem is envy. 

Envy comes clothed with anger. When we’re angry and afraid, the ancient part of our brain—called the reptilian brain—takes over. 

When we sin, we forget our humanity and act like beasts. 

Like the crouching serpent in the Garden of Eden who crouches as a predator, waiting to pounce on Adam and Eve.  

Very few of us are cold-blooded killers like Cain. 

But the same envy can cause us to hurt others. 

In life, we have only two choices: Step on the serpent or become the serpent.  

We have a brand-new Feast talk series titled Blessing and Curse which will run for nine weeks. The series centers on Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Why study Genesis?  Whenever Jesus was asked hard questions by the Pharisees or by His disciples, He liked turning back to Page 1 of His Bible. Because Genesis shaped His thinking. And because we want to follow Jesus, we want to read the Bible the way Jesus read His Bible. He read Genesis in a very special way—and that’s how we want to read it too. This is one of our lofty goals at The Feast. Talk 1 is titled God Made You Good— based on Genesis 1-3, about God making everything good — including humans. 

Let kindness be the infection that you spread in the world. I hope this message blesses and inspires you :) 

 How do you know when it's time to let go of a project, a task or an endeavor? Allow me to share some reflections on this topic from a powerful parable preached by Jesus. 

 In a world full of noise, knowing God's voice will help you make the right choice. Be blessed with this message. 

 You ever wonder why there's so much waiting in life? Why there are gaps inbetween your prayer and God's answer? Because it's in the waiting where God works on you. May this message bless you today. 

 We all have moments in life where we fail in our spiritual walk, no matter how long we've been following the Lord. It's normal. Don't give up. Keep hoping. Keep praying. Keep believing. And keep moving forward. Let God change you slowly and surely. 

 My first (hopefully of many) vlog entries. I pray it will bless and minister 😁   PS. Sorry if its a bit blurred at the end. Lesson learned: don't shoot outdoors at 6pm.