Paradise Band Concert, Pastor Mark.

Ytd, Paradise Band held their concert at church at night.

Wonderful concert, the worship was incredible.

Most importantly, the message was shared and people were saved.

Pastor Mark's message was simple and easy to grasp, which is good.

He used 2 examples, one that of a Bible story and another one of his life.

I simply review these things, not word for word, neither do I have all the points.

Which means, I need to take notes.

On to the message,

Pastor Mark preached from,

Luke 19:1-10 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

He started off giving the story of his child hood life. How at a young age his father(I'm not sure, I think passed away, but could have been the father left. Not so sure.). So he grew up without the love

of a father. When he was in high school, he started thinking why was his life in such a mess.

He tried to follow his peers but could not find the love that his father did not give.

Pastor Mark, then explained that Zacchaeus was a a tax collector and that tax collector's during Jesus' time were corrupted and thieves. When they collected tax for the Roman Empire, they took an extra more of the tax and kept the extras for themselves. So(So again sigh) Zacchaeus was called a sinner by the crowd and they hated the fact that Jesus went to his house to eat.

Pastor Mark then combined his examples, he said that we are sinners and we are lacking the love that we are trying so hard to search for. We try to follow the crowd that hated Zacchaeus, and that we end up lost like Pastor Mark during his high school life. For we didn't find the love that we were searching for.

In his conclusion, Pastor Mark said that the love that we are looking for is in God. Adding to that, he quoted Jeremiah 29:11

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

and

¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

The verses are very straight forward and he didn't go into detail but just that we are special and that if we seek God, we will find him. He then shared about God's love and asked for anyone who wanted it.

Good message, but its really lengthy and draggy. Quite hard to follow if you don't focus. I have to admit I also daydreamed at some point. I don't want to be critical, so moving on after altar call, they got everyone to go to the front and scream and shout and sing and jump while the did songs like,

Love Showed The Way,Take It All, One Way. Anyways I don't want to talk about the concert cause thats not what this is about, other people can do that.

Okay I found out the reason why I had that stomach ache on Friday late night. On Friday, for lunch at school, I had fried rice and there was cut chilli padi and soy sauce. So being the man I was, I took a nice big heap for chilli padi and laid it on my rice. Well the fried rice was awesome, but the stomach ache wasn't.

One more thing is today's message. Paradise Band lead the worship and Pastor Mark preached.

Next post.