God is at Work 24/7

Nothing is great in the beginning stages of when God first starts working in a man's life. That man's prayers will be elementary. His efforts will be clumsy and uncoordinated. His whole sense of walking with God will be spent in the shallows. But if that man refuses to give up or if he refuses to give in, if his desire and determination and his sense of purpose will capture his emotions, then God will work with his life.

It takes time, persistence, and desire. These elements become the fuel for revivals, energy for relationship with God, and absolute authority in the Kingdom of God.

There are endless ways by which God shapes the soul of a man.

· For some all it takes is a look, as with Zacchaeus.

· For some all it takes is for them to be blinded by light, as with Paul.

· For some it takes a midnight confrontation, as with Nicodemus.

· For some it takes a noonday conversation, as with the women at the well.

The only growth worth investing in is that which grows slowly. Great men are made in stages. Not overnight.

Adapted from preachit.org

Get Up and Continue Walking

In our daily lives as believers, we are encountered with so many things that we sometimes end up questioning what is really happening.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says, “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

In our walk with the Lord, we are not alone and on so many times or days, we find that we bogged up with everyday down and these downs can be easily overcome when we continue seeking and trusting upon the Lord.

These everyday down that we overcome with the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, they help us to be fully equipped and others too to face the challenges and setbacks that might come our way while still waiting upon the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As believers, we ought also to realize under the conviction of the Holy Spirit that our failures in the past do not and will not define our future and should make all believers in Christ Jesus to look forward and fully trust upon the Lord to be able to achieve the life objectives that they did set and when an individual stumbles or fall, the stumbling or the falling does not make sense in the literal physical life or in the spiritual to remain down but ought to stand up and continue for the fall is not the end of your Christian walk with the lord.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we ought to pray that the Lord will bring those who will be willing to correct us in love and still be willing to take an extra mile with us.

Is It Wrong To Be Convinced/Convicted By The Holy Spirit?

According to The Complete Christian Dictionary For Home, School and Office, the term ‘convinced’ means ‘to be persuaded or to persuade someone else that something is true; to cause someone to believe.’

For example, ‘I am convinced that neither life nor death...nor any powers...nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38-39)

According to the New International Bible Dictionary, the term ‘conviction’ is defined as,‘the first stage of repentance, experienced when in some way the evil nature of sin has been brought home to the penitent, and it has been proved to him that he is guilty of it.’

An example of such is in Psalm 51, where David realizing he had sinned against God, is overwhelmed with sorrow for his transgression and cries out to God for forgiveness and cleansing. An example in the New Testament is found in John 16:7-11, where Jesus says that when the Holy Spirit comes, ‘he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Here the word ‘reprove’ (NIV ‘convict’) means ‘convince’ (so RSV) or ‘prove guilty.’

The thought is that the Holy Spirit addresses the heart of the guilty and shows how inadequate ordinary standards of righteousness are.

In my walk as a believer in Christ Jesus, I have come to a point where I am left wondering with how we as believers behave. I would like us to share about some two instances. The first instance is about a young man who was in his mid twenties. He refused to compromised his faith in Christ and accept teachings that were not right and were literally out of the scriptures that the church he was fellowshipping in were starting to be engaged in and even the Bishop of the Church was welcoming. The young man refused the teachings and was willing even to be taken to the Bishop of the church. When word reached the Bishop, the young man who was in college was sent out of the church and because he was being sponsored by the church, his scholarship too was cancelled immediately. The Lord was faithful and provided for his school fees until he graduated from the College with a bachelors Degree. During the time when he was sent away from the church and scholarship stopped, other believers were coming to him and telling him, ‘why couldn’t you just keep quiet and then let the church continue paying for your fees and then after graduating, you can now leave the church?’ The young man wondered how believers who truly knew the teachings were wrong would tell him that. He kept on trusting upon the lord and the Lord saw him through. In brief, I can say that this young Christian man was convinced and persuaded in the truth found in the Bible.

The second instance is about a man who was in his late thirties. This man sinned and the Holy Spirit convicted him and he went out and confessed of his sins to his family, relatives and even ministry partners that he used to work with. When the ministry partners heard of the sin he had committed, they forced him to say it before the congregation where they used to go to church. After doing all that was expected of him, the young man was shown the door and told not to fellowship in that particular church but look for another church to be going to. He eventually left the church. After he had left the church, false accusations started coming concerning him and was wondering why the Holy Spirit convicted him and the step that he took to confess his sins to other believers. In the same church during these difficult moments for this man, there are other believers who were also wondering why he shared this with the church leadership and they even told him that he was stupid.

These two instances can leave one wondering what is right to be done in their Christian walk with the Lord. I would like us to ask ourselves the following questions;

a. Should we stand for the truth of the Bible no matter the cost and the repercussions of standing for it or not?

b. When convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, should we only confess it to God and let it be our own ‘skeleton in our closets’ not known even to our spouses, relatives, mentors, pastors etc or should we be willing to be vulnerable and allow God to minister His healing in our lives.

I believe as a Christian the answer is with us in the Holy Bible and let us remember that the Holy Spirit addresses the heart of the guilty and shows how inadequate ordinary standards of righteousness are.

The Wounded Healer

A quotation by Henri Nouwen from The Wounded Healer comes to mind:

"[We must] enter ourselves first of all into the center of our existence and become familiar with the complexities of our inner lives. As soon as we feel at home in our own house, discover the dark corners as well as the light spots, the closed doors as well as the drafty rooms, our confusion will evaporate, our anxiety will diminish, and we will become capable of creative work. The key word here is articulation. Those who can articulate the movements of their inner life, who can give names to their varied experiences, need no longer be victims of themselves, but are able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. They are able to create space for Him whose heart is greater than theirs, whose eyes see more than theirs, and whose hands can heal more than theirs. This articulation, I believe, is the basis for spiritual leadership of the future, because only they who are able to articulate their own experiences can offer themselves to others as a source of clarification."

A Higher Calling

Are there times when you feel like switching off your mobile phone because you do not want to receive a call from your Pastor, Business partner or any other person, or when the phone rings and you see the name on the screen you don’t want to pick up the phone and talk to him or her. You just let the phone ring until it disconnects ant the person on the other side gives up.

 

There are times that I have done that in my own life even as a Pastor especially when I feel pressed or very low in my spirits and just needs to take a rest from nearly everything. When sharing about the ‘HIGHER CALLING’, I am not sharing about a call from Safaricom, Zain, Orange, Telkom Wireless, Vodacom, MTN or any other because after being in possession of the gadget for almost a decade, I have come to realize that there are times when call from these Companies do not go through or fail because their servers are jammed or they may be having some technical problems.

 

The ‘HIGHER CALLING’, am sharing with us about is that from above. A calling that is not only available to those who can afford to buy a mobile phone and the airtime but a calling that is free and for all of us who are alive.

 

I Thessalonians 4:3-8, ‘It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.’

 

God is calling us today as His sons and daughters to be;

Ø  Sanctified

Ø  Avoid sexual immorality

Ø  Learn to control our bodies

Ø  Live holy lives

 

Though as believers we are aware of the calling and the standards that God has set for us as his sons and daughters we still find ourselves not meeting the standards and we really feel very bad when we realize that there are things that makes us fail. It is high time believers need to be wise and alert in our Christian walk with the Lord Jesus Christ and be aware of the schemes that the enemy (devil) uses to make us unholy.

i.                    Fear. II Timothy 1:7, ‘For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self discipline.’

ii.                  Loneliness. II Timothy 4:16, ‘At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.... But the Lord came to my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. ’

iii.                Money/Greed. I Timothy 6:9,10, ‘People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with griefs.’

iv.                Immorality. I Timothy 5:1,2, ‘Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.’

v.                  Bitterness. Ephesians 4:31-32, ‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’

 

May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and forever more.