The Beauty Blog, M.D.

Devotional A Now and Future Kingdom The One Year Worship the King Chris Tiegreen Read: Isaiah 65:17  God has promised a new Kingdom. It will be dramatically different than the kingdom we've grown up with. In fact, He has already begun it. Jesus gave glimpses of it whenever He has taught, healed and forgave. He gave us glimpses of it even now, whenever he answers or prayers and grants us the pleasure of His presence. The new heavens and the new earth are a future promise with a present taste. Still, we often live a lot like the captive citizens of this fallen planet. Are we?Of course not. We know God's promises and we depend on the. We've seen His mercy and known His love. The King is coming, and what He does when He comes will be amazing. The problem for many of us is living the future glory in this present world.Basing our lives on one-day promises doesn't seem very realistic today. But doing so is one of the clearest ways we can honor God. We can go ahead a

Written: May 12, 2017 These past few weeks have been one of the most fearful times of my life. It totally confuses me because in a normal person, it should be a time of celebration. I am currently 7 weeks pregnant. We found out at 5 weeks as I have my period on the dot. The second day of my missed period, I took the test. Our family's biggest ongoing prayer request has come true. In all honesty, my heart is grateful but my brain contradicts (nega, you might say). I feel that my body is not as strong as before. I feel every wave of nausea and fatigue washing through me and it totally drains me out. With Matteo, I felt nothing after waking and throwing up in the morning. I can walk from Greenbelt to the Ayala MRT with ease. I eat and eat. It has been totally different. But one of my biggest fears is that the baby wont have a heartbeat. Having known people going through miscarriages, it has been on my mind nonstop. Catching the pregnancy early meant waiting for a couple of

Image source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141030041559-33038416-how-to-be-a-digital-superstar-and-the-skills-you-re-gonna-need John the Baptist put words into the attitude that every believer should maintain: in every situation, we must defer to Jesus. It's tragic when the world looks at us and sees only us. Instead of our being the supporting actors and Jesus being the star, we often get the roles reversed. But Jesus is more than a supporting actor, and we are not rightfully stars. Everyday, repeat John's words: He must become greater, I must become less.- Chris Tiegreen

I am standing in  the middle of a sand storm. No cover, no shield. The wind swirls in huge waves around me. It is howling in my ears and pounding me at my back. It is pressing me at all sides. The sand is everywhere, scratching my face, inside my clothes, my shoes. It's massive weight has blocked out the sun, engulfing me in darkness. It pierces my eyes and keeps them from opening. I am pushed to the ground, feeling a sense of dread that it may slowly fill my lungs. I know that the sun is out there, but I cannot see it. I don't know how long before it ends, or if I have the strength to endure it. In the middle of a sand storm. Crying, confused, anguished, determined.  Clinging on a single solid rock. The  Lord  is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.  Psalm 18:2 Image source: http://www.vizrt.com/news/newsgrid/35339/Sand_storm_potential_forecasts_with_StormGe

THE GOD WHO WOUNDS Source: The One Year: Worship the King by Chris Tiegreen READ: Job 5:17-19; 6:1-4 Have you suffered wounds from God? We'd prefer never to know pain at His hands, but the Bible gives us no such promise. What we are promised is comforting, but much less relaxing than what we'd like to hear. We want a god who will always give us what we want and never give us hard lessons. We want to be conformed to the image of Jesus without the chisel that shapes us. But God's hand, though always good, isn't always easy. He takes us not only through joys and comfort, but also pain. We could just ask our Living Lord. That sacred head once wounded has a testimony for us: Those who worship God yet live in the world will be traumatized by the contradictions between the two. Count on it. And it isn't just an unfortunate dynamic; the God we worship has ordained it. Whether for correction or for character, its' from Him. Is that unsettling? Don

A lot of things grieve my heart lately, in a good way. Is that even possible? I see it in a good way because the things that grieve us are the ones that I know that we have to pray for. They are the burdens placed by God to force us on our knees and pray. One of those things is bench christianity. Church sitting your way through life reflects a lack of hunger, as I now realized. I realize this because I went through it, maybe not totally out of it, but recently God has been telling me to get off my butt. This brings me to this one of my recent devotionals. Still by Chris Tiegreen The One Year Worship the King. Don't stop until you reach the bottom: ( I didn't type the whole devotional, just my favorite parts) A Godly Hunger Read: John 4: 24-28 How do we honor God? One of the best ways is to breathe His desires and to crave His will. There aren't too many of us in His body who do that consistently ( Claire: GUILTY! ); it isn't very natural and it doesn&

Source: The One Year: Worship the King by Chris Tiegreen Read: Ephesians 5:1-2 Nowhere in The New Testament is love defined simply as a common human emotion. Biblically, love is much more radical than that. It extends farther more than the world's love- to enemies and strangers; and it also goes deeper- to sacrificial offerings of adoration. We love because God adamantly insists that we be like Him. Think of Jesus' love: He embraced cheaters and prostitutes. He touched lepers and dead people. He is sometimes tender and sometimes very harsh. He always told the truth, even when it hurt. He loved sinners but hated sin. He let people self destruct-Pharisees, insincere seekers, Peter in his denial-never compromising principles for the sake of sentiment. He was incredibly patient with hardheaded disciples. AND HE BLED. Does that description of Jesus' love reflect the kind of love we show each other in the church and in the world? Probably not. We have a long way to go. BU