THE joy of the Lord is our strength.

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

I want you to know this: that God invented joy. But not only did He invent joy—He created the reason for joy. He created His own reason for joy.

You see, God is joy. He wanted to be joyful. And what He did was He created the reason to be joyful. So, He created Audee Villaraza, Vanya Castor (Worship Ministry)

He created you. So that He could be joyful.

This is the God that you worship. And right now, you might not like yourself. You look down at yourself. Right now, you criticize yourself. You look at yourself and you’re not very fond of yourself.

I’ve got good news for you. God created you and when He looks at you, He is happy. And when He is with you, He’s happy.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

So, when I go through my trials, when I go through my struggles, I remember that God is happy when He is with me.

And He becomes my strength.

I’m a John the Baptist now. I want you to prepare your heart for the Word of God as spoken through Audee Villaraza.

Audee will be preaching, but I want you to believe in your heart that God will be the One who will be speaking to you in your heart. Because Audee does not know what you’re going through but God knows what you are going through.

And so, I want you to have this expectation that God is a God who is with you right now.

Let me tell you a story…

For three years, I lived in Anawim, our Ministry for Abandoned Elderly— it’s now a 30-year-old ministry.

At the start, we had no electricity, no running water, and we were living in nipa huts. So, we had two kinds of visitors.

The first kind comes and complains: “Ay, walang kuryente. Wala kang electric fan, Bro.Bo. Walang air-con!”

The second kind of visitor thinks that Anawim is Heaven: “Bro. Bo, napaka-spoiled mo naman!”

You see, especially at night, when there were no lights, we would look at the sky and see a million stars. It was so beautiful!

My dear friends, there are also two kinds of persons right now listening to me.

You see, the problem was not Anawim, the place. The problem was the perspective, the paradigm, the perception of the person.

Life is a gift and you have to decide: Are you going to receive the gift or not?

The Feast is a gift. The Word of God that Audee will be preaching now is a gift that God is giving to you.

Will you receive it? Will you see it?

I pray that right now, you’ll open your heart. If you expect little today from the Word of God, you will receive little. If you expect nothing, you will receive nothing. But in the preaching of the Word today through the man of God, Bro. Audee, my dear friend, if you expect much, if you expect a miracle, if you expect that God will change you… Then, I want you to believe that’s what will happen today. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.