Reach and Serve

I continue on to the core value of Reach & Serve. I would like to discuss my definition of ‘Reach’ in this organization.

In everyone’s life, there comes a time or period of trial, hardship, struggle, etc. During this tiimes, we either express it or not. We either know why it happen or we can’t fathom why this happened to us. Have you been in that situation? Or you are in this situation right now! You are working on a solution but it does not seem to get you anywhere. There is a lot of emotions going through this period of time – resentment, anger, frustrations, etc. And none of them is desirable. I know the feeling because I have been there.

I would like to share with you the 3 pillars or foundation of ‘Reach’:

1. Hope
2. Believe
3. Action

Hope. The very first thing we would like to give to someone in a period of trial is hope. Without hope there is no faith. Hope is the cornerstore of faith. We must realize that hope lights up the mind and brings peace to the life of that person.

Believe. With faith comes belief. We brought in the light of hope, now we restore the belief system of the person. This is a process of restoration and renewal of our thoughts and mind.

Action. Inspire people to take action. Hoping and believing requires action but this is about change. Decide to take action to change.

I see a lot of organizations reaching out. They go out to some place, give certain things to people, then leave. Then they go back to those places and see that nothing fruitful is being achieved. It is still the same way the last time they saw them. And they get frustrated. We must understand that reaching out to others is a relationship. This is not just a one time event, leave, move on with our lives, then go to another one.

We have to learn from what our Lord Jesus Christ did and exemplified. He came down from heaven to bring us hope – the hope of reconciliation and redemption with our creator. With his teachings and examples, he tries to restore our belief system that was clouded by the devil. Yet, it is up to us to take action and come back to Him. Although He demonstrated the extreme sacrifice for all of us and showed that He went back to heaven, He did not leave us alone. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us, to walk with us, to establish a continuing relationship with God.

When you reach out, care.

We finally made it! After several tweaks and configuration, we have finally created Reach & Serve’s blog site. I decided to start Reach & Serve as a blog site to make it more open. We will eventually have the website running soon but we will be starting this as a blog.

I believe a little bit of introduction about the site is in order. Not to make this blog a novel, but Reach & Serve is actually the Lord’s answer to my prayer for purpose. Later on, I believe I should write an eBook on the Lord’s work in my life.

The past year and a half was a struggle both spiritually and financially. But the Good Lord was gracious enough to carry me through all these trials. The Lord has put me on a situation where it was just Him and me, one on one. I know for most of us, we don’t want to be in this kind of situation of trial. However, one must realize that if the Lord is going to use us, you HAVE to go through the fire, being pruned, shaped up, strenghtened for His purpose. We fail to realize that God wants to use us for His purpose. Not that he is happy we are suffering but I believe it is the exact opposite. I am a father of two wonderful children and there are a lot of times that I hurt when I know that they don’t listen to me although I know for a fact that what I ask them to do is for their own good. What do you do? You eventually try to talk to them one one one. I honestly believe that this is also true with our Father in heaven.

A week before last year’s Thanksgiving, while watching Joel Osteen’s worship service, I wept like I’ve never had ever done in my life and finally received God’s purpose and peace in my life. With my struggle in searching for a breakthrough, I finally found peace. Christmas was seen on a different light and you get to understand the true meaning of His coming down from heaven to earth.

For several days, I would woke up early morning to hear two very distinct words in my mind – reach and serve. Most importantly, the underlying principles for Reach & Serve was very clear. Reach was about ‘Hope, Believe, Action’; Serve was about ‘Why, Give, Value’. I would go into the details of this concepts later on but at those moments I believe that was my purpose in life.

I am a computer consultant and has been shifting my career into wealth planning (more on this later on). I thought for sometime that God was leading me to a new career. I should have known better. He has shown me that my technical abilities and the preparation that he has made for my real estate knowledge is going to be used for His purpose.

Initially, I designed Reach & Serve as a platform for the promotion of financial awareness. The vision was to transform financial challenges to financial freedom. The mission is to give the light of hope and share the knowledge of wealth. However, as days passed, the purpose for this website has gradually evolved as an extension of my ministry in our church. By the way, I served as the technical lead person for our church (Charisma Life Church) media ministry in Pomona, California.

I believe the mission is still to give the light of hope. But the vision is now to inspire people to care. As Christians, we go to bible studies and get ourselves immersed with the study of the Word of God, but most of the time, we stop there. We get information overloaded that we fail to translate what we learned to how we can apply what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do.

There is nothing wrong with studying but I believe even the devil knows that there is God. And they know that Jesus Christ died for our sins. But what we do with that knowledge and how we inspire other people to believe that God loves them and that Jesus Christ died for our sins, is the start of the battle. Just as the darkness clouds during the storms of our life, the Sun does not fail to shine either during those times. Most of the times, we forget that darkness is nothing but the absence of light. You can not bring darkness; you take out the light to make darkness.

I hope to use this website as an inspirational launch pad for people committed to changing their lives. That truly God loves them inspite of whatever circumstances they are going through right now.

We are now working on making Reach & Serve as a non-profit organization and my sincere thanks to a CPA, Mr. Raul Castillo, for providing his services to make this a reality. We will keep you posted on this development. I am also hoping to have my brother in law who is pastoring a church in Singapore to step in as a contributor on this website.

We are now moving forward and watch out for the next series of articles that we will post in the website.  I cannot do this alone.  Yet one person at a time, we can make a difference.

Till next….