A redeemer- the reason for Christmas

He has sent me…to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for all the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1)

I have been a little unwell for some time now and have been on medication for a while. I had tried visiting some private clinics but their prescribed medication did not help. So yesterday I decided to visit a bigger hospital and my choice was a government hospital. When I was waiting to see the doctor, some prisons police brought in some prisoners that were so unwell, some of whom could not walk well due to the magnitude of their illnesses. These prisoners had their hands bound together with each other which I believe was aimed to prevent them from running away. Despite their illnesses and being bound, I could not help but notice their rebellion. The police men who were with them had to keep on hitting them and shouting at them because the prisoners were not following the instructions they were being given.

Their state made my heart ache. They had been so unwell and not looking so nice. However, I could not understand why despite being imprisoned for rebelling against the law, they still continued being rebellious even with their current state. It was then that I realized how the same thing happens to us in life, especially spiritually. When we visit prisons or hear of prisoners, the first thing that comes to mind is people enclosed in a prison for going against the law of a country. However, in our spiritual lives, prisoners are those people who are held captive by the devil and his powers, which are living in sin that is, living against the laws and commands of God.

 Being a spiritual prisoner is worse than being a prisoner of any country’s law. A prisoner of sin is one in darkness.  When I talk of being in darkness it because I have been there and many of us has been. I had been a prisoner of sin in form of pride, lying, lust and I had many idols in my life. When sin binds you, you become its prisoner/slave. Despite the fact that it oppresses you and steals the good in you, you still remain under its submission. You want to stop sinning, say for example lying, but you can’t help it. You always find yourself lying to cover up for the past lies. Because of this, although you want not to lie, you live a life of lies, that is, you become a prisoner/slave of lies. This may lead you to lose many good things such as friendships, job opportunities and above all, it will affect your relationship with God. The only thing that can help you is if you realize that you are in prison/bound and you decide to get out of that prison/slavery. Getting out of that prison would require you to pay the price of your sin or have a redeemer who will help you out of the prison.

 The bible in Isaiah 60:2, explains about how the world is covered with darkness but only His glory is able to bring light to the world. Unless the glory of the Lord shines on you the prisoner of sin, you will remain in darkness, in captivity. However, the glory of God has come. God sent a redeemer who would be the light to our darkness, who would both be the redeemer to help us from the prison of sin and the price for our sins. Jesus Christ the son of God is the redeemer and the price. The celebration that we have just had is the remembrance of the birth of the redeemer in the form of flesh who came to pay the price and get out of prison.  However, we go about feasting and giving gifts to loved ones without considering Him who was freely given to set us free.

In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus himself repeats the words of Isaiah 61:1-2 and goes ahead to say that he is the fulfillment of these words. That he is the one setting prisoners free. Jesus still sets prisoners free, that is why we always celebrate Christmas. Although his birth into flesh happened just once, redemption is always available for us. We have the choice to accept it and be delivered from the prison of lying, doubt, lust, unforgiveness, adultery, idolatry, hatred and so many other sins or we can choose to ‘drive him out of town’ and fail to receive him. How I pray that we will receive him, go down on our knees in prayer and fasting and let him set us free completely from our captivity.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Patience, kindness, goodness and the rest of the fruit

I really love my job, although it’s a field that I never thought I would pursue, I have come to love it and I would always want to work in this field for the rest of my life. One of the reasons why I love my job is because every day I meet different people with different needs all looking for a solution or at least some guidance to get through some situation. I always try to help them out and although sometimes I never have a solution to their problems, I listen and direct them to someone or something that will help. It is a very nice job because I get to interact with many people, listen, smile, laugh and even encourage. It gives me so much joy and many times I leave work in the evening with a great feeling of satisfaction and never tired. 

However, it can be difficult sometime because I don’t always meet people with nice personalities. Sometimes I meet rude, mean or even abusive people. In these moments, it can be difficult because my job requires that I still remain nice. At times I want to get mad and even give a rude response but I have no choice but to be quiet, listen and try to empathize.  You see, being nice to those people who are nice to us is never a problem. However, being nice and kind to those people who are rude to us is very difficult. Sometimes I have found myself walking out on a person who gets rude or starts to quarrel because it is not in me to be quarrel. Not that I can’t be rude or quarrel, it’s just that I sound horrible when I get mad. However, because I have desired to be more like Christ, He has helped me to realize that I need not to be rude but be kind.

I would be a liar if I said that this process has been easy. However, I am grateful to God and His word. I have learnt that He requires of us to be kind because it is the right thing to do. He requires us to be filled with goodness and be patience because this way we are able to win many people to Him. Galatians 5:22 says that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,  goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. God expects us to live by the spirit which means that we have to have this fruit.  It can be hard to be all these when the world around us is the opposite. When customers are rude, colleagues are plotting evil; the bosses do not want to listen, friends take advantage of our kindness and many other challenges.

I have read books talking about how love must be tough and how love and respect must be two way but God has been teaching me that we don’t just love only those who can love us. The bible talks of following the example of Jesus who was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7), to love; which requires of us to be patient even with those who are unkind. To forgiving those who walk over us or even take advantage of us and so many other mean acts.

Patience, kindness, goodness and the above are not easy. However, I have been learning that to be patience it requires us to do nothing. If you want to walk in patience you just do nothing even when you are hurt, don’t even talk about the person who hurts you with others, that can turn into gossip. Instead, you should take time and pray. To be kind requires us that instead of being rude or mean when someone is mean, we should take this opportunity to do good to them. That is, to overcome evil with good. Goodness requires us to just be nice at all times. This is where gentleness and self control comes in. we ought to have self control at all times because at times, our flesh will want to repay evil with evil. Only self control will help us overcome the flesh and that way we will be gentle and kind. When we do this, joy will never depart from our hearts. However, let’s remember that we can’t achieve this on our own. We can only achieve it through having a constant walk with God, that is like having an intimate relationship with God which requires us to take time to be with Him, listen to him, read his word, worship him and pray.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Learning from Christ

I love learning new things and especially those that concern life. I can say that the people I hold close to my heart are those from whom I have learnt things or those that have taken time to teach me new things. One of these people is my daddy. I have acquired so much knowledge and life skills from him. One of the things I have learnt from him is how to plan, budget and make small notes. I remember while growing up, we used to do so much budgeting and planning together. Furthermore, my dad always had a notebook and a pen with him and he would always note down everything. Having spent so much of my life with him while growing up, I realized that I acquired all these from him. I have always found myself budgeting, planning and writing down everything about me. I can’t tell you how many notes books I have because they are so many and my phone adds up to the list too.

Talking about learning, I am reminded about Christ and his disciples. The bible tells us that Jesus chose twelve disciples that he walked with in his physical life on earth. Among these disciple however, there were three of them that you would always find him with. Simon Peter, who was one of them was always with him and always desired to be with him, that he at one point in life decided to walk on water just to be where Jesus was. Because of this continued spending time with Jesus, Simon Peter learnt who Jesus really was and also gained a lot from him.

The bible says in Acts that on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down on all of them, Peter had the boldness to speak on behalf of the disciples. However, he did not just speak to defend the apostles but also spoke about Jesus. There is no way he would have spoken about Christ if he had never known him. Peter was fully aware of whom Jesus was and no one would change his mind about Christ. That is why despite of the arrest and much suffering that he went through after Jesus had gone to heaven, he never denied Jesus at any point.

My brief story, the story of Peter and many other stories including mentor-mentee relationships that we all go through, are all signs that most of the things we learn in  life only happen when we spend time with those we are learning from. Sometimes we do it unconsciously while other times we deliberately decide to take time and be with them to learn.

 In our Christian life, we always desire to be like Christ. We desire to love like him, forgive like him and even be holy like him. However, many of us fail to realize that the same theory of spending time with the person we want to be like applies in our relationship with Jesus Christ. It requires of us to take time (set aside some time) and be with him to learn from him. Spending time with him requires us to deliberately set aside all other things and just be with him. Being with him only occurs when we go in His presence in worship, praise/thanksgiving and studying His word to hear from Him. In these moments, we get to hear him through His word and even directly through His still small voice. In these moments, he reveals to us our diseases of the heart and helps us to deal with them. He reveals to us who he really his and shows us how we can be like him. These are the times that he makes us sensitive to all things that we are able to know what is right and stick to it and what is wrong that we may avoid it. 

Some things can never be learnt or transformed in us unless we choose to spend intimate moments with Christ for Him to change them. This therefore calls for us to deliberately set time to be with God.  I encourage you to take time and learn from Christ. I can promise you that, it is best to set aside time from your daily schedules to be with Him because once you get used to doing that, you never want to be away from him.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.