Choosing Life

These past weeks I have pressed in, stormed the gates of heaven, and pleaded before God, asking Him to reveal Himself as the Lord of my breakthrough.

I had been battling discouragement and fear... Somehow, the enemy managed to crawl his way into a corner of my heart.

Until... a few nights ago when Abba Father reminded me of my spiritual authority over the kingdom of darkness. Taking a decisive stand, I stared the enemy in the face and showed him the spiritual armor I was wearing. The belt of Truth, the sword of the Spirit, the shoes of Peace...

Thanks to God, in this my difficult hour, He has raised me to the next level of my spiritual upgrade.



As February is about to end, I give it a name... Choosing Life. 

For indeed, life is the constant choice that I must make to rise above my present circumstances.

Choosing life over death must be our moment by moment decision if we are to thrive in the kind of world we have today.


Last Friday, I was invited to speak at the Christian Academy of Bacolod's Night of Blessing for the high school graduating class. This was the school ministry I headed for almost 18 years, and it was my first time to be at any of its official functions since I left twelve years ago. I tried for many days before then to prepare the message I was to give... but nothing gelled. Finally, in the early hours of the day itself, I awoke and asked God to give me the very words He had for me. I told Him, "Please give the message, Lord. I will be Your messenger."

In just a couple of hours, the message was ready.

This world that we live in is very much like the days of Noah. Here is how the Bible describes it:

 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. (Genesis 6:11, 12)

We don't need to go very far to experience this. Each day we are confronted with corruption, greed, and violence. Moral depravity around us is a daily reality. Even the very air we breathe is poisoned. The pollution all around, the abnormal extreme weather patterns we have been experiencing ... these are a manifestation of how the whole creation is groaning beneath the weight of its degeneration.

We groan with the rest of the universe. We know this is not the life our Heavenly Father intended for us. Deep down inside we long for a coming day when our shattered glory will be fully restored and we will be made whole, never to be broken again. We long for the redemption and restoration of everything that has been stolen from us.

A world where shalom is the norm – where nothing is broken, and nothing is missing – this is our birthright, those of us who are called children of God.  Though we do enjoy glimpses of shalom right here, someday in heaven, we will fully enjoy the blessing of shalom for all eternity.

In the meantime, we continue to wake up each morning and face our daily realities. As we look at our families, our hearts overflow with the best dreams and hopes for them. Yet we often wonder if our loved ones, our precious children and grandchildren, will have the strength of character, moral fiber, spiritual conviction required for them to navigate through this day and age of shifting moral values.  We also are painfully aware of external dangers against which we in our mere human strength are powerless.

In truth, we are like the Israelites in the process of conquering the Promised Land. The land flowing with milk and honey is ours to possess, but giants stand in the way. The battle is waiting to be won, but victory will not be handed to us on a silver platter. We need to fight our way through.

The battle is for the minds and the hearts of our families, our communities, our churches, our nation. And the giants we are fighting with are the unseen evil forces from the kingdom of darkness.

This enemy assaults us with the subtle weapons of discouragement, hopelessness, fear, doubt, anxiety, unbelief, disrespect, dishonor, division… to name a few.

But Lord God Almighty... He is the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Angel Armies, and He is on the side of His people.

Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

In our spiritual battles, God makes available two powerful spiritual weapons for our use, weapons tested and proven to withstand any enemy attack.


A right way of seeing.

A right perspective is always the starting point.

The Israelites were standing at the border of the promised land, the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants. But first God instructs them to send 12 men ahead to spy out the land, one man from each of the twelve tribes. The strongest, bravest and most reliable men in their tribes were chosen. Joshua and Caleb were among them. They were to spy out the land and return after forty days to give their report.

Upon their return, ten of the spies gave a bad report saying, “It is a wonderful land but we cannot conquer it. The cities are fortified and large, and the people who dwell in the land are like giants, and we are tiny grasshoppers compared to them.”

But Joshua and Caleb saw the land in a different light. Caleb quieted the people and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

Choosing to believe the negative report of the ten spies, the people rebelled against Moses and Aaron and decided to return to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb pleaded with the people not to rebel but to trust in God who has promised to give the land to them.

“The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’ Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.” Numbers 14:7-9

This angered the Israelites that they even tried to stone the two spies. As a result God declares that the people would wander in the wilderness for 40 years until everyone in the nation of Israel over the age of 20 had died. But then He says of Caleb: “But my servant Caleb because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him into the land into which he went and his descendants shall possess it.” Numbers 14:24


Forty years later, two old men, Joshua and Caleb, lead a generation of young Israelites in their conquest of the Promised Land.

We know how this story ends. In Joshua 21:43-45 we read these beautiful words of testimony:

So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of all their enemies stood against them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.

Victory all around. And it all started with a right way of seeing.

In the same way, I hear God speaking: My sons, My daughters, I do not want you to see with your physical eyes, or you will never make it. I want you, in this Jubilee season, to develop a right way of seeing.

Like the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, we are to cultivate a different spirit that looks at earthly realities from the perspective of heaven. We can see our families, our children, the circumstances of our lives, imperfect as they may be, the way our heavenly father, our Creator and Redeemer, sees them, for it is God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.

Only then will we obtain the inheritance God intends for us.


A right way of speaking.

A right way of speaking naturally results from a right way of seeing.

The words we speak are a powerful weapon given to us by God. We are not often aware of it, but we have been given tremendous creative ability.

What are we able to give birth to?

We give birth not so much to what we dream or aspire to be, but to what we are able to eventually declare with our lips.

Thoughts remain as seeds until they are given words.

Whatever we say, or declare, we harvest.

It is a seedtime and harvest principle. We sow with our words… and what we sow, we reap.

Our speech is attributed to what we eventually harvest.

The Word of God puts it clearly:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit (Proverbs 18:21).

Our tongues have the power of life and death. Life and death can be directly translated to blessing and cursing.

In Genesis 1 we read how God created the world. He simply spoke, and what He spoke came to pass.

Let there be light, and there was light.

Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And it was so.

Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so.

Whatever God spoke came into being.

Being made in the image of God, we also have creative abilities. God created the universe by His words.

In the same way, we create our own universe, our own ambience, our own atmosphere and environment through the very words we speak.

A favorite quote of mine goes this way: The words we speak become the house we live in.

We create our own realities by the words that come out of our mouths.

In Romans 10:8-10 Paul wrote these words:

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

This principle of confession does not only work in the area of salvation, it is also true of everything else in our lives: healing, help, provision, protection, favor, peace.

Thank God for such a powerful weapon He has given!

Our mouth is the gateway of life and death.

Through it, we have the capability to speak life into any dead situation we may find ourselves in. The power to speak hope to any area of discouragement or fear.

In the same way, the mouth is able to speak words that are offensive, insulting, demeaning – both to God and to our fellowman.

James tells us that the truly mature man is he who no longer stumbles in the way he uses his tongue.

Not only is the mouth a gateway, it is also a rudder. The words we speak actually set the direction for our lives.

While it is often our desire or intention to say something good, there are times when we are worried, fearful, and anxious. Indeed, as long as we breathe, we will have to deal with disappointment and frustration over our not so ideal circumstances or the imperfections of people including, our own.

How easy it is to blame, grumble, and complain, or to speak a demeaning word.

But really, the best position to take is to say nothing at all, until we can bring ourselves to speak life to the situation we are in.

Let us tear up the list of what people have said or done to us, and stop reciting the litany of our past hurts.

We can be redemptive in our speech, using our words not to describe, but to change, the situation we are in.

There is tremendous creative power in declaration.

With our words we are able to sow life-giving seeds that produce a harvest of peace, hope, joy, health, provision, protection, encouragement in the lives of people.

As parents we have a huge responsibility. We are the gatekeepers to the destiny of our children.

In my younger years as a mother, I have had to repent for the many times I have cursed the identity of my children without my knowing it, or without intending to. By God’s grace my husband and I were still able to speak many words of blessing over our children, thereby reclaiming the spiritual territory which the enemy tried to steal from us, and fully believing that God is the only one who can undo the mistakes of our past. Through our words of blessing we have given God room to redeem our children from the damage that our words may have inflicted on their young hearts.

God is a God who blesses. Each day of creation, for the first five days, the Bible says that God looked at what He had made, and He saw that it was good. And on the sixth day, He looked at everything He had made and indeed, it was very good. He blessed the living things He had created saying, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Genesis Chapter One should be part of our daily Bible reading. Here we will see the heart of God for His creation, for you, for me, for the whole world.

His heart is overflowing with love for all of us, so much love that when man fell, choosing to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is actually the Tree of Death, rather than freely eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, God sent His only Son to pay the full price for our ransom.

It is never too late to adopt a lifestyle of blessing, and to begin speaking words of life, words of love, and words of hope to the people who matter the most to us.

It is never too late.

Blessing will open the heart that has been walled in, words of blessing like a gentle will soften the fallow ground of people’s hearts.

Moses, in his parting words to the Israelites said these beautiful words:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life that both you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:19).

These two weapons – a right way of seeing, and a right way of speaking, are powerful spiritual tools we have been given in our fight against the enemy.

A right way of seeing is looking at people and circumstances from the perspective of heaven.

A right way of speaking is speaking the language of heaven in the lives of people and in our life circumstances.

How awesome to realize that the message God gave was actually meant for me, truly a fitting one for this month!


Good-bye February! Thank you for the precious lessons you have given me.

When this month began I was on the downward path to discouragement. I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.Psalm27:13

God reminded me that I had a choice... life, or death.

I am choosing life!

Thank You Father ... for breaking through and rescuing me.



I end this post with two blessing passages taken from Scripture. The first one is found in Psalm 20, a psalm that David wrote before he went to fight one of the greatest wars he ever fought, the war against the Ammonites. And history tells us that David won this war.

Psalm 20
1 May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble;
May the name of the God of Jacob defend you;

2 May He send you help from the sanctuary,
And strengthen you out of Zion;

3 May He remember all your offerings,
And accept your burnt sacrifice. Selah

4 May He grant you according to your heart’s desire,
And fulfill all your purpose.

5 We will rejoice in your salvation,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners!
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.

6 Now I know that the Lord saves His anointed;
He will answer him from His holy heaven
With the saving strength of His right hand.

7 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses;
But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.

8 They have bowed down and fallen;
But we have risen and stand upright.

9 Save, Lord!
May the King answer us when we call.


The second one is the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6:22-26, often called the Aaronic blessing because God instructed Moses to teach this blessing to Aaron and his sons.

The Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying “This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them:

The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make His countenance to shine upon you

And be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you

And give you peace.”