• Who among you wanted three to four nights a week for yourself and your sweetheart to dine out, watch movie and go to an entertainment place?

• Who wanted more time to spend in the gym, running and getting physical for a better health and a hot body?

• Who among you wanted to have more than one month to go to a vacation get away?

• Who wanted an extra or more than enough left over money to do anything you wanted?

I guess your arms are aching now if I request you to raise your hand if you answer positively to all the questions. Then, if you answer yes, it means you are desperately needing a MARGIN since Yesterday!

You needed MARGIN to enjoy life more!

What is a Margin?  It is the extra space in a pad of paper or in a page of your note book where you can write any extra point, important thought or just entertain yourself by drawing cartoon characters of your teacher or your boss.

In life Margin is anything available beyond what do we needed! It is anything where the best things happens. It is something most of us missing and do not have because of prioritizing the seemingly essential and urgent things we thought we needed to work for, to acquire or to accomplish.

To give concrete examples:

1. We do not have extra “Time Margin” because we work longer to earn more money to sustain the needs of our loved ones but as a result we lost connection with them.
2. We do not have extra “Time Margin” due to the demands of life that we neglect health practices so our body suffers.
3. We do not have extra “Time Margin” because we needed more time for our daily activities and chores that we neglect our relationship with God who can guide us how to have a better lifestyle, as a consequence we mess things up.

When you’re busy busy busy and tired of doing things over and over then you get less Margin in your life and most probably you are stressed out and your relationships are suffering!

Do you wanted to increase your Life Margin and enjoy life more? Jesus has something to tell you today: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11: 28, 29)

If you wanted to learn more about LIFE’S MARGIN it is the topic of our church family’s message series every Sunday!  This coming Sunday (January 24) we will learn “SCHEDULING MARGIN.” How to schedule to have Margin? I am inviting you to visit us, leave a comment below so that I can communicate with you!

Now I’d like to say, BE LINKED TO HIM & HE’LL IMPROVE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS!  Relationships not only in your family but in your work places, neighborhood & your church as well.

Reasons for awful relationships are attitudes of big-headedness, self-centeredness & pride.  People with these attitudes are pain in the *** & are irritants.  Nobody would like to be with them.  They are miserable and they would like other people, specially those whom they love, to become miserable also (that’s terrible isn’t it?).  They easily get hurt, wreck their own relationships & the relationships of people around them.

Think of someone like that…if you can’t think of anyone it is YOU!

A promise of a good relationship this 2010!

If it is you and you would like this year to have better relationships be connected to God & He will create in you a new person with a humble heart! He will transform you to become a person who is genuinely interested & concern with other people.  He will make you a person who doesn’t try to impress others to be accepted.  He will make you give up the thought that you are always right & not insist with others what you want.

The Bible said you will become a person who is ‘quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…’ Or you will become a person who ‘Seek first to understand, than to be understood’  (as Stephen Covey worded it).

If you become a humble person before God, He will make you a person who accepts your faults & accepts your dependency to Him & to other people.  You will be come a person who will learn to say the two most important lines in the world: “I was wrong” and “I need help.”

Then people will be attracted to you and as a result your relationships will become better if not the best!

May your 2010 be filled with great relationships!

Relationship is like a garden, if you do not nurture it it will become messy – the flowers, the fruit plants and the vegetation will be overcame by the weeds, those will wither and will eventually die.

There are a lot of challenges in every relationships.  Again like a garden the soil needs to be cultivated, the plants has to be watered and it has to be given nutrients. Do it regularly! If not this relationship will fade away!

The question is: how do we nurture relationships?

St. Paul told the Galatians this, “…Serve one another in LOVE…’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out and you will be destroyed by each other.”

The key word in nurturing a relationship, aside from Love, is SERVE! I don’t mean you becoming a servant or a slave of your friends but I mean you act love to them. When you see the word love in the Bible it is always a verb not a noun. That is why the King James Version of the Bible called it Charity – Love in action!  When you love you serve, you act it out, you do something that will benefit your friend.  You extend yourself even if you do not feel like doing it.

To be very practical, let me suggest: have a time once a month or a week to go out to a gimmick, lunch or dinner with your wife, fiancée/fiance, friends, parents, siblings, kids!  This time technology makes it easy for us to connect with our friends where ever they are! Communicate with your friends in Facebook, Twitter, chat in IM or you can send text messages, on this I strongly do not suggest forwarded messages – by all means please make something personal.

Let me end this post with a challenge: What are you going to do this Christmas to nurture your relationships?

The question is how do we have a good relationship in every segment of our life, in our communities and in our workplaces.

I would like to share with you today four things on how to have a GOOD relationship:

1. Initiate new relationships, you need it for a better life!
2.  Nurture your existing relationships, those are difficult to regain when lost!
3.  Restore broken relationships, it is godly to forgive those who hurt you and to ask for forgiveness to those whom you’ve hurt!
4.  Severe a relationship that leads you to sin, preserve your character!

I will post the details on these four in the next coming blogs.  For the moment pray that you will be blessed with great relationships!

But after his famous success and getting the first ever 7 titles in the world of boxing – Manny was pounded with the controversy of having an illicit affair with his movie partner Krista Ranillo.  Many speculated that Jinky’s outburst of emotion during the thanks giving mass, after his fight with Cotto, rooted from that story.  Then a paparazzi video of a woman riding with Manny in his car was shown in the web and media. This maybe true or not but his fame, relationship with his wife, his family and his wife’s family and probably even with some of his fans, though he was welcomed again like a hero, is tarnish.

When the popular boxer was asked about this matter in an interview he responded (contextually): The issue is part of his private (personal) life and do not meddle in it.

Krista & Manny in separate exposures.

Like him famous people and celebrities in the government and showbiz  or other people oriented industries always make the separation of their public and private lives a good alibi when something not good are talked about them!  But we usually use it also as an excuse in a milder form when people talk about the bad in us in our neighborhoods, our social clubs, our offices and work places.

It is a fact that there is a life that revolves within the bounderies of ourselves and our families  There is also a life that can be immediately seen by anyone.  But there are things that no matter how you try hiding, will be exposed.  The Filipino saying “walang baho na maitatago” is true!  And when the not favorable things you do is expose, more often than not, the aftermath is devastating.  It can destroy the good reputation that you are building up all your life!

Our advance technology helps expose the hidden things we do through video scandals, pictures, blog posts and other exposures in the electronic social networks.  Human Resource Departments of companies are now utilizing these media to determine your character before they accept you.

If you come to think of it people now are more authentic, bolder and expose than before.  We have less private lives now.  Yet, our authenticity is  determine by our character, morality and values.

Be very careful in what you will post in any of your social networks, but most importantly, safe-guard you character, your moral and your values because even before people see your actions there is a God who reads and see your thoughts!

BE CAREFUL BOTH WITH YOUR PRIVATE LIFE AND PUBLIC LIFE!

Today is an All Souls Day Eve and it is storming outside! I’m wondering if the souls are also afraid of the storm. Do they hate the rain and the strong winds, like us? Are they concern with flying objects like house roofs & the falling billboard frames? Do they stay inside the house when there is typhoon or do they try to have some recreation too, even during rainy and typhoon season?

I asked those questions because I will talk about the least or the fifth priority of a person to eliminate bad ghost feelings that over-rule many homes (refer to the two preceding blogs as reference for those bad home ghosts). After putting God first, then your family second, your work third, your friends fourth…the fifth should be RECREATIONAL or PLEASURABLE ACTIVITIES. We call these activities with different names: sports, outing, gimmick, vacation or amusement. It is anything that restores our energy!

It is the least but is very important because our life is ruled by the Stress – Relief principle. If we always work, work and work, we will either burn out physically or emotionally. That is the reason why God wanted us to rest!

Normally our regular jobs give us negative stress, exhaust us and wear or waste us out! We need positive stress that helps restore and refreshes our body and mind to function well again.

This positive stress should…

…Be something that relieves us from our regular distressful activities.

…Motivates us to focus on something that is good and new for a short time.

…Makes us feel good, but not a dirty, immoral or unhealthy, form of excitement.

…Helps us to enhance what we do regularly.

Let me mention some:

1. A whole day, a half day or just a night date with your peers, family or your spouse.
2. Or a play schedule with your kids.
3. A 45 to 30 minutes walk or running every day or every other day.
4. A two to three week gym schedule.
5. An over night out of town trip.
6. A one week end or one week holiday.
7. A team or partner sports like badminton, basketball, bowling, volley ball and others.
8. A new hobby or crafts that will make you excited to accomplish.
9. Or just a plain pleasure reading.
10. Or a whole day sleeping and doing nothing.
11. And for most women, cleaning the house, cooking and baking for the family is a form of recreation.

Boracay, a Filipinos' & foreign nationals' vacation getaway!

This is very essential! If you don’t intentionally have a recreation, you will always have that stressful lifestyle of purely working. You won’t be re-created, that is why it was called recreation, and you will die early! Then, all the souls that we honor this weekend will welcome you warmly to their invisible world. Do you like that?

May you all have a great Halloween! May all the bad ghosts on the way to your work, in your work places and in you homes be exorcised by the help of the tips and suggestions presented in these special Holloween Blogs!

May mga nagsasabi na merong nag-aalaga sa kani-kanilang bahay, merong mga duwende at mga lamang lupa. When I was a kid in our ancestral home in Polillo island, our kasambahays and boarders saw kapri, tikbalang and a white lady roaming our house and our trees filled backyard. At minsan yong iba naming mga guests ay kinikiliti ang paa habang natutulog. Naku wala nang sasama sa akin nito sa bakasyon sa amin. Scary ano? Sa bahay nyo ano ang nakikita?

White apparition going down the stair way

Kaya lang mas nakakatakot ang bahay na walang magandang relationship ang mga nakatira sa isa’t-isa! Kung kadalasan ay samaan nang loob ang mararamdaman mo at laging merong away at bangayan between spouses, between parents and children and even house helps are having conflicts if not with the employers with fellow helps. Mas nakakatakot tumira sa tahanan na ganyan at higit pa sa isang bahay na may masasamang creatures na nakatira!  How is your household now?

For a home be a lovable place to live we need to have  a good family foundation.  And one of the best foundations of a good family relationship is setting PRIORITY in the most important things in life! I would like to suggest what should be the first, second, third, fourth and fifth priorities.

In this blog I will present the first and second…

First you need to PRIORITIZE GOD! He is the best and the only ethical third party in your relationship. The old saying…“The family that prays together sticks together”…never goes old. Let me picture it this way: Imagine God as the focal point of everything in your family life, then when all of your family members get closer to Him your distance between each other will get closer. When you get intimate with Him you will be intimate with each other! How will you get close to Him? Individually, you should have an intentional date with Him every day by reading His Word and praying to Him. Also as a family have a time to talk about God and have a special day to be in the church together once a week. In the Philippines mostly it is Sunday. Go to church before having a family outing! Or make it a point that going to church is a part of your family outing.

Secondly, if you wanted to have a good relationship with them PRIORITIZE YOUR FAMILY! Put them next to God, than anything else! They will know that they are your priority if you show your LOVE to them.  Love is practically spelled T-I-M-E!   You can show it by spending quality time with your spouse and children! I need not to add more it should be very clear.

If you wanted your home not be a horrible place to live and your loved ones will welcome you in a calm and warm atmosphere after a tiring work day, prioritize the first two essential elements of life!

Tomorrow I will post what should be the third and fourth priorities!