Still learning, still growing!

Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are –face to face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiselled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it.

2 Corinthians 3:16-17 MSG Translation

God is a personal personal God, sometimes I forget and I am just doing my duty, robot-like. But when I remember that He is God, there is a peace that feels my heart that has no comparison. God is so personal that He looks beyond my church building and sees me, I matter; this is so amazing.

I could be braggadocious and say that I don’t care if He recognizes me or not but I really do. It is pretty important to me that God stops to ask me, “Child, what did I say?” not reprimanding but reminding, guiding, leading, He is God and yet He is a gentle leader.

At times, I get anxious and I try to join the rat race again (you know those things are subtle) and He says, “Child, that way is not My way, wrong direction, turn around!” not because He wants His rights at all cost but because He is leading me somewhere and only by following His way can I get to His destination for me!

I see some things and He says, “Child, no! Praise, I am working on it, remain at rest; don’t try to work things out yourself, let Me!”

Sometimes I just want to get out there and fix things cos I am a pretty good fixer, I have got a sharp brain but He says, “My purpose is better, My way is faster even if it doesn't look that way, it is stress-less, trust Me”

Then I see that my works, all of them; are proof that I don’t trust in my Father, so I stop. But when I rest in Him, confident and serving Him, He works things out to His glory, He is the author anyway; if I can trust Him to be author, then I can trust Him to be finisher.

All I need do, is what He says!

La di da

Why do I need so much convincing anyway? He made the whole earth, everything that was made was made by His word, He can make every area of my life, family, career, destiny, purpose beautiful!

#1 You’re kidding!

You’re kidding

If you think you want to put on Christ and also blend with the rest of the world

It is my opinion that a Christian should be so devoted to doing what God has said,

he/she has no time to be criticizing other Christians

If you find yourself doing that, losing your gentleness and spewing hatred towards another Christian

Be assured that you have gotten lost in the mews of comparing yourself with another

In case you are mistaken, Christianity is not a contest

It is a race against yourself to please God better today than yesterday walking in the

righteousness that is of faith

whatever your understanding of that is, is your problem

If you get the understanding right, deep down in your spirit, you will get a witness

you will know

The desire to be better than another, to tear down another, fear, guilt, the terror of not measuring up will disappear

you will be in that place where you are secure in His love, in His saving grace

And you will be fully persuaded, convinced that you are qualified for His goodness and every good thing in God

not because a man ticked you right and said, ‘nike’ with a ‘you got it right’ on his result pad

But because the most high God put His sign of approval on you

Because of the cross of Christ

You are approved, loved and accepted

No one, no argument or legal defence can make you feel otherwise

not when you have the Holy Ghost who is your legal advocate constantly defending you against the accuser; the enemy

believe me,

no, believe God’s word

just the fact that you are a Christian ensures that you are different

You will never be just another man on a street corner when you have Jesus.

who is now seated at the right hand of God

and because of the Holy Ghost

He is always present knocking at the door of your heart asking and waiting like a gentleman to see if you would let Him in and let Him bear your burdens (If you aren’t saved)

But when you are born again

You gotta accept this truth: HE LIVES IN YOU

Biology can’t explain it, physics, chemistry, logic will fail you

but it is truth all the same; its reality

Reality will witness to you, that you are God’s tabernacle

this is the greatest testimony of love

That the most high God would inhabit a man

and make Him the temple of God

A man in Christ is different from a man in the world

A man who lacks understanding will call it mystical

I call it spiritual

1 Corinthians 6:17 says same

If you don’t believe that, live it and respond to that truth

in your daily life; that is too bad

I am done with what anyone says

I am born again, born of the spirit and I make no apologies about it

I don’t even intend to prove it to you

You don’t matter

I zeroed everyone the day that I walked down that aisle and said

‘I accept Jesus as Lord’

If you don’t believe it, too bad, I do not live to please you

And yes, I have authority

I have the believers authority

Being a member of a church did not qualify me for authority

being a man in Christ qualified me to walk in authority

breaking-it-down

I have authority because I believe in Jesus Christ and on Jesus Christ

I believe that he was sent by God to be crucified on a cross for my sins

so that I might be free to walk boldly into God’s presence without fear, guilt or condemnation

I recognize and honour authority

but I also have the wisdom of God

Christ is my wisdom

so I walk pleasing God in all that I do

I believe Jesus will be the only one presiding in the white throne judgment

I long for that day with all that is in me

when the all-knowing only wise God will preside.

Glad that I know Him theoretically and practically

because He does exist beyond the pages of the bible

I see Him in my life daily doing His purposes and great things

I have seen Jehovah Rohi

I have seen El roi

Jehovah Mekoddishkem

Jehovah Tsidkenu

Jehovah Rapha

Jehovah Shalom

Jehovah Jireh my provider
My counselor

If you don’t know all the aspects of God or desire to experience all of God

you will not progress in many areas but it is up to you to seek Him

It is not something a Wednesday/Sunday service will do for you

It is a daily spending time with God, reading about and experiencing Him
Doing this will ensure you are not shaky in your faith

It will build your confidence in the goodness of God so that you don’t find it convenient to blend in or/and be like the rest of the world

If you want to know if God speaks, read Genesis 2-3, He spoke to Adam and Eve

read Jeremiah, he spoke to Jeremiah and showed him visions

He spoke to Isaiah and Ezekiel of the famous dead bones living again

That was God speaking to Ezekiel

He was a friend of Abraham, not a fake friend but a genuine friend who speaks with you, is concerned about your life, where you are going.

He spoke to Jesus Christ, told Him what to do, where to go, when to go, who to listen to
(Just read the Jewish feast where he yelled, "If anyone thirsts, come to me and drink")

He spoke to John on the Island of Patmos, the bible speaks of John being transported and seeing the revelations of the end.

If he can speak to John, why do you think he won’t speak to you?

God laughs

God rejoices when a soul is saved

God gets hurt and grieved

God sees

God speaks too

Can you find out more ways in which God expresses Himself?

if you look out for it while reading your bible, you will see it

It would help you get to know Him better and more

I did!
Am still doing!

Trusting Jesus...

It takes the Spirit of a man to by-pass the mind
and believe that God is saying.
Yes God speaks.

He speaks for a reason and because He wants to do something
There is 'grace' in surrendering to what God wants to do
His timing is excellent also

Best of all,
You don't have to do anything
If He says something
He will bring it to pass.

You do, however have to learn patience
Patience is staying believing what God has said

I can express this best with the illustration of Abraham whom God had promised a son
and Elizabeth who knew that she would birth a special child even though her husband
Zechariah was a doubter, He believed his body more than he believed God
He was just too darn old, and he focused on this, Luke 1:20 says, he did not believe
Luke 1:13 says, 'he was praying, is it that he didn't expect any answers
So why pray?
Is praying just some part of a ritual we must do to feel good with ourselves?
Or is it a cry for the attention of a gracious and merciful God? Cos He does hear us.

What am I saying today?
You need to engage your spirit, exercise it by speaking in tongues and feeding it with the word of God.
By being perfected in the love of God, by trusting and looking to Jesus always, by strengthening the weak areas in you instead of justifying them by the help of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Ghost wants you to be made perfect in Christ, your will power will never be able to accomplish that, engage the help of the Holy Spirit.
I love Enoch's testimony, it says it was recorded that Enoch pleased God all his days on the earth and that God took him, that is just so awesome to me.

My exhortation: Be diligent, be excellent, fear God, be perfected in Christ love for you. Have a great week marked with the presence of God all through.

Something I learnt this week that I plan to reinforce:
The key to trusting God is meditating on the word of God, day and night and you will be successful indeed!

Guest blogger "Larigold"

I met @lanre_olagunju on twitter though a guy called @ikeamdi whom I met through @eshiemokhai. They are all great guys, you can follow them on twitter. Also @dami_maverick is really good and @masterpiece1618. They are people I talk to regularly. They are not the only one of course and I will mention as I recall.

Okay so @lanre_olagunju says I should post an article he wrote for Mothers Day last year and so here it is.

Why Woman Matter

By Lanre Olagunju

The fact that the first woman is the only creature created from an already existing and living being tells a lot about a woman’s uniqueness and strength. But in a couple of ways, the world is yet to harness the power and strength of a woman. The saddest part is that instead of appreciating and nurturing their uniqueness, women have been subjected to some forms of hardship as a result of their gender.

You look around and you realize that violence on women and other degrading acts has been on a steady rise lately. I’m really glad and impressed that the Nigerian House of Representative has approved the recommendation of life imprisonment for rapist, and a four year jail term or a fine of not more than N 200,000 or both for persons convicted of performing Female Genital Mutilation-(F.G.M) on a woman. I think this should bring some hope of restoring human dignity to our women.

I’ll like to share two stories to buttress the fact that women matter in all aspects of life; that women have a lot more to contribute to our society than just being regarded as mere baby making machines. They practically bring joy and hope to our world. Women make our world more exciting and pleasant. We’ve got to listen and take them a lot more seriously if we’d attain economic or individual progress and prosperity.

For instance, there are several speculations as regard what would have been the state of Lehman Brothers if it were to be Lehman Sisters or perhaps, Lehman Brothers and Sister. Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850 by Henry, Emanuel and Mayer. Lehman Brothers was the fourth largest investment bank in the US and with holdings of over $600 billion, at some point, it was considered as a company too big to fail. Unfortunately, it became the largest bankruptcy filing in history when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008. It was actually forced to declare bankruptcy when it experienced drastic drop in share prices after so many clients departed, and also as a result of devaluation of its assets.

The truth remains that the closure of Lehman Brothers played a major role in the global financial meltdown that struck the world in 2008, basically because many big banks all over the world that dealt with them lost billions, leading to the crash of several millions of micro investors.

When you consider that Lehman Brothers crashed due to the high level of risk that were taken by the chief strategist at some points, amongst other bad business approaches and decisions; you just might want to assert the sentiment that our world, probably would have been saved from the present global financial crisis, if such a great investment bank had some feminine administrative influence. See I’m not critically saying that women don’t take risk at all, but the truth is that they are a lot more cautious than men who can be excessively driven by testosterone.

Several studies have supported the notion that women are more risk averse than men. Experts have also researched that women are more trustworthy and altruistic, most essentially when negotiating for others. Going by a though-provoking hypothesis by a Canadian researcher at the University of British Columbia business school, it was discovered that “high testosterone level in men of a certain age are associated with more aggressive decisions that throw caution to the winds.” It then becomes wise and imperative to include and respect the views of women as well in economic matters.

The second story is the sad story I was told about a family who lost three kids in the December 10, 2005 Sosoliso air crash. I learnt that the mother of these kids had a dream prior to the crash. In her dream, she saw coffins and that got her troubled. After she prayed about the issue, she had a premonition that her kids would be involved in a disaster. When her kids were returning home for Christmas holiday, she became more afraid and she prayed that if her kids will be involved when coming home for the Xmas holiday, may God not let them get their flight tickets. Somehow, the kids later called and said they couldn’t get their tickets for one reason or the other. So she agreed and made provision for them to come by road. But her husband won’t share in her premonitions, so he disagreed to the kids coming by road. He later made arrangement to ensure that they travelled by air; unfortunately the family lost all the kids.

The two instances might help to emphasize that men need to build a culture of listening and appreciating women and that involves acknowledging their views and opinions on crucial matters, be it in economic, political or social issues. And this goes beyond celebrating them on women/mothers’ day alone.

The issue is not about erasing the natural differences between men and women, the point is to acknowledge those differences and then harness them as a tool for our collective good.

Happy mothers’ day!  

#Good read