First things first- A relationship with God

God desires for us to have a personal relationship with Him first before anything else. However, the devil doesn’t care how many miracle we perform as long as our relationship with God is broken. This explains the word in Matthew 7:22-23.The bible talks of people performing miracles in the name of God yet God telling them that He doesn’t know them. This is a clear indication that God is more concerned about having a relationship with us than our service to him. This explains why after He saves us and before releasing us into ministry, he sits us with him and molds us then sends us to serve him. This was the case of John the Baptist.

When John was born, he was sent into the desert where he grew up knowing God. God first worked on him before releasing him to go baptize people including Jesus. His relationship with God had to be right and personal before his serve to God. This is the reason why God calls us to seek first His kingdom then other things will come later. It is useless to have it all on the outside with nothing inside. It’s like an empty shell. I imagine of an egg shell without any content inside. However beautiful or shapely it may look outside, it is useless without its content. This is usually the case of a Christian who doesn’t take time to first get intimate with God.

The church is so full of Christians who’s Christianity is defined by their works in church which include giving, preaching, healing and even organizing large Christian concerts and meetings. Although these acts are wonderful, they are useless to those who perform them if their relationship with God is not right. This is because at times we may not be able to perform these things in church. Sometimes we may be unwell or away from church gatherings and if our life is defined by works we will end up empty. Furthermore, when Christ comes we may miss our chance to be with Him because we will have dwelt on works rather than on a relationship with God.

A relationship with God involves abiding in Him and walking in His ways. It involves seeking to be in that secret place with Him where we can talk to him and him to us. In that place where we don’t need to in a crowd but where we can approach Him and have Him prune us, mold us and guide us in according to His desires. That place where we can get through reading His word and going to him in prayer and humility. That place where whether we have the strength to get out of bed and join others in praying or not, we can still get to and have an intimate time with God. That place and that kind of relationship is more important that our works.

My everyday prayer has always been that even as God uses me to glorify Him through my life and through serving Him that He will work in me and always keep me in that secret place. That place where works won’t be first but my relationship with Him will come first before my service. I desire that this will be your prayer too.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Freedom from guilt

“Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him,” that a beautiful verse from Romans 4:8. God through his word tells us of his so many blessings upon us and one of those best verses is the verse above. I realize that the guilt that we get from our sins can eat us away despite the fact that we are forgiven. Guilt is a terrible thing.  The bible tells us of the story of Judas Iscariot who as a result of guilt ended up hanging himself (Mat 27:1-5). Judas had betrayed Jesus and when he realized that he had betrayed an innocent man, he decided to return the money that he had been paid for his act. However, when he went to the authorities to try ‘withdrawal his statement’, they ignored him and told him that it was his responsibility. This led Judas to the act of suicide through hanging himself. 

This is usually our fate many times. Our lives before receiving Christ are sinful and a betrayal of Christ. During this time we are usually guilty of our sin. Worse is when someone tells us about Christ or we come to the realization of our sins. This causes so much guilt in us that many times leads us to repentance and therefore to receiving Christ, who unlike the authorities in the case of Judas forgives us instead of sending us away.

However, there are many times despite being forgiven, we still hold on to guilt. This guilt holds us down for so long that it affects our relationship with God. This guilt tries to convince us that we are not good enough, that we are still sinful and that God can’t love us well. I speak about it because I have been there. During these times it becomes so difficult to pray because when we begin, we remember of our sins and instead of moving to higher levels of prayer, we just keep repenting. Other times we even feel so unworthy to even serve God in ministry because this guilt makes us feel worthless. I had suffered this for a long time after coming back to Christ, until one day God through someone helped me to realize that guilt is the devil’s weapon to drag us down and to keep us from rising to where God intended for us.

The bible tells us that Jesus came to set the captives/oppressed free and I have come to realize that guilt is a form of captivity/oppression. There is freedom from this oppression because Jesus took the guilt away that we may be free. The bible says that God remembers our sins no more when we repent. When we realize this, we gain the key to living a life of freedom, freedom to live according to the promises of God and like the children of God enjoying the benefits. The key to this once more is realizing that Jesus came to set us free (Luke 4:18-19).

God bless you and keep growing in Him!

What a beautiful thing

Many of us love new born babies, they all look beautiful to us. I have never heard anyone call a new born baby ugly because to us new things are beautiful. Although the future turn out of the new born is usually unknown to us, we all look at the current state of the baby and celebrate them. However, I realize that this is never usually the case for us to God.  You see, when we are born physically, we are ugly to God. This is because we are born with the seed of sin in us and this makes us ugly. The bible says that our sins hide us from God. This ugliness can make it difficult for God to look at us and even come to our rescue when we call to  him. However, I thank God for grace and His great plans for us.

I like to say that God does not look to us just physically, He doesn’t look at our current state when we are born by our mothers and before we receive him, instead, he looks at the future. I love how the bible in Psalms 139 explains how God saw us before we were formed in our mothers wombs. I love how Jeremiah 1:5 says how God ordained our purposes even before we were born. I love how most part of the bible talks about the future that God saw for us and has made for us. My favorite is Psalms 139:16 that says that all my days were ordained before my birth. This keeps me free from worry about the future because it has already been laid down. All I always pray is for God to help me walk in that path laid down for me.

Reading Ephesians 1:4-14,I see that despite our ugliness at the time of physical birth due to the seed of sin in us, God had already predestined us to be adopted in His family through Christ Jesus. He had already chose us to be holy and blameless in Him before the creation of the earth.  In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he has lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. What a beautiful thing!

It is a blessing to have God who doesn’t so much dwell on our ugliness but who is so determined to make us beautiful through redemption. Who looks at the beauty in our future not the ugly that we are or were in. He gives us grace to live a holy life of saying no to sin. He goes ahead of us giving us victory and when we fall, he lifts us up. The bible says that “greater love has no- one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,”(John 15:13) Christ did that. What a beautiful thing!

Dedz:

"Beautiful, Beautiful" 

Don't know how it is you looked at me

And saw the person that I could be
Awakening my heart
Breaking through the dark
Suddenly your grace

Like sunlight burning at midnight
Making my life something so beautiful, beautiful
Mercy reaching to save me
All that I need you are so beautiful, beautiful

Now there's a joy inside I can't contain
But even perfect days can end in rain
And though it's pouring down
I see you through the clouds
Shining on my face

Like sunlight burning at midnight
Making my life something so beautiful, beautiful
Mercy reaching to save me
All that I need you are so beautiful, beautiful

I have come undone
But I have just begun
Changing by your grace

Like sunlight burning at midnight
Making my life something so beautiful, beautiful
Mercy reaching to save me
All that I need you are so beautiful.

Like sunlight burning at midnight
Making my life something so beautiful, beautiful
Mercy reaching to save me
All that I need you are so beautiful, beautiful..

(Francesca Batistelli)

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Suffering with others

I have been in a wonderful season, a season of joy where God is making things beautiful in His perfect timing. For this reason, I have found myself dancing and praising unconsciously, just giving thanks. However, this morning while dancing and praising for the good things, God revealed to me that I need to sometimes pause for a while, look around me and be an encouragement to them that are in harsh seasons of their life. You see, for reasons I can’t really explain, I have lately been meeting people who are suffering pain resulting from issues such as death of loved ones, sicknesses, breaking marriages, family wrangles and many issues. However, although I have sympathized, I have not done anything else beyond that to help ease the pain that they are going through. It is for this reason therefore that God reminded me that I needed to go an extra mile, that is, to share in their suffering.

By this God reminded me that I need to stand with them, listen to them, encourage them and pray for them. I believe this is what God meant when He said that I need to suffer with them. This reminded me of the story of Job and his family and friends, when God decided to allow Job to be tested for His glory. Instead of encouraging him, his wife decided to ask Job to curse God and die (makes me doubt her love for him) while his friends condemned him saying that he was suffering because of his sins. However, I learn that God himself spoke to the friends and told them that His wrath was upon them because instead of suffering with Job, they decided to speak evil of him.

I know many cases in the bible where people suffered for their sins example; Achan, David, Ananias and his wife and a few others; however, I have learnt that our suffering is not always because of our sin. Just like God uses our good times to glorify Himself, he can choose painful moments to glorify Himself to and make us better. The bible in James 1:2-4, says that we can never be tested beyond our abilities. It goes ahead to say that our testing develops patience which leads us to become complete, lacking nothing. How wonderful that is. I have learnt that instead of ignoring people in their suffering, I can use such verses to encourage them.

God commands us to encourage others daily (Hebrews 3:13), therefore, we must obey. I have therefore decided that instead of ignoring them, I should listen, encourage and even pray for them. Hug those that can be hugged and wipe tears of those that I have the grace to. I should help them realize that their season of pain will end and that above all, there is one who understands it because He too went through it (Hebrews 4:15) and that He will give them grace to emerge victorious. I therefore encourage us to do the same, to suffer with those who suffer in obedience to God and as a way of extending our love to them.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Keeping guard

I know falling back to sin is never an option for many of us. We can never want to imagine ourselves back to where Jesus brought us from-how it used to be. Forgetting what is behind and moving ahead, we are running to get the prize promised to us. We try to do what is right and to keep our relationship with God right by constantly praying, reading the word, maintaining a fellowship with fellow believers and trying to obey as God requires of us. However, many times we over look what seems like ‘small sins’ or rather, we fail to stay on guard against those sins. Many times we forget the power of little, just like the tiny mustard seed that grows into a huge tree. This is how those ‘little’ sins do and when they grow from small to huge, they become so difficult to uproot.

The bible in the book of Matthew 13:24-25 tells of a parable of how a man planted good seeds in his farm. However, at night, his enemy came and sowed tares/weeds and they grew with the wheat until the time of harvest. From this parable, I learnt that even as we run the race to receive the prize, it is possible for the enemy to sow sins/weeds in us ‘at night’. If we are not careful, these seeds of sin can grow and occupy the space in our lives that is meant for good things. The seeds of sin germinate and grow into strong sins with deep roots and they can take so much handwork to uproot.

These seeds can come in many forms. The bible tells us that we should get rid of anything that easily entangles us so that we can run the race (Heb 12:1-2).These can include ‘little’ envies, jealous, lust lies, gossip, self glorification, pride, little grudges etc. Although they may seem little, they can slowly grow into big things. Example, a lustful thought if not dealt with immediately can lead into adultery or fornication whose end result is great consequences. A good example is the story of David and Bathsheba in the bible.

I have learnt through the help of the Holy Spirit that to prevent such, I must stay on guard. Staying on guard means continuously reading the word of God and using it as a mirror to evaluate our lives and then getting rid of the sins that we find during our daily self evaluation. I also learn that I should keep praying everyday for God to show me those things and to uproot any and every form of evil that may be taking root in my life and heart whether at its infant or advanced stage. Reading through the bible I realize that there are many things that I do or I have done that God considers wrong. Unless in keep reading it, and asking the spirit of God to show me, I can never learn and for this reason, I might be found with blame when the Lord returns and this could cost me my prize.

I pray every day that God will help me to stay on guard, to help me use the grace He has given me to help me resist sin and to continually prune my life so that I will be found blameless when he returns. I pray the same for you and also that you may desire to grow deeper in God even as you grow in other areas of your lives.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Unconditional love

While we were still sinner, Christ died for us…. (Romans 5:8), this is one of the best verses I have read in my bible. It is great because it explains the unconditional love that God has for us. Christ did not require of us to stop sinning or to promise that we would stop sinning if he sacrificed himself for us, but he chose to die and take our sin so that through him showing us his love, we would be gradually transformed into sinless creature. He took our sins and thus gave us his righteousness. He loved us even in sin.

A good illustration of this verse is the story of Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha or the sinful woman as she is referred to in some bible books. The bible says (John 11) that Jesus loved Lazarus, Martha and their sister who was Mary. It says that when Jesus went to raise Lazarus, he found Mary broken and crying. At the sight of her, Jesus wept. Jesus felt so much sadness and compassion for Mary that he could not hold back his tears. This Mary was a sinful woman because reading through the bible we find that she was forgiven sometimes later after Jesus had brought Lazarus to life, when he had visited that area.

It was during that later visit, after the resurrection of Lazarus that Mary had anointed Jesus’ feet with oil and at that moment her sins had been forgiven (Mark 14). This means that all along, she had been living in sin yet Jesus had compassion for her and felt for her at her time of loss that he wept with her despite of her sinful nature. This was a true definition of unconditional love. In this case I see a God who doesn’t hate us for our sins but loves us and is there to show his love for us. He doesn’t force Himself into us but his love draws us to him.

Jesus loved us unconditionally; he did not look at how much we had sinned or the magnitude of our sins. He did not look at whether we would accept him or not, he chose to just love us. We can see that he even has compassion for us in our difficult situations even while we remained in sin. Such love is not easy to find. The bible says that the greatest kind of love is where someone chooses to give up his life for another (John 15:13) and Jesus did it. The only other love close to that that we know of is when Ephesians 5 describes how husbands should love their wives, but even that cannot be attained except through the help of Christ.

Christ loves us unconditionally and died for us to take away our guilt and shame that we may have as a result of sinning and leaves us blameless. The only way to love him back is through obeying his commands (John 14:15) and letting him be the lord over our lies. I pray that we will choose to love him always.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.

Your rightful place

The word of God really amazes me, it amazes me now even more when I have been praying and desiring for its fresh revelation and understanding. I was in church today and the Pastor was talking about obedience and all the benefits of obedience. It was awesome and I must say that I got it so clear that the key to any form of success and prosperity is obedience to the word of God, full obedience. It is very important that you understand that, so to have a taste of our today’s sermon, please read Deuteronomy 28 and Joshua 1:8-9. Well, I wasn’t writing to give our today’s sermon-the Pastor already did that. I am writing to share about something that crossed my mind when the sermon was going on. That is the story of Mordecai and Haman in the book of Esther.

The book of Esther talks about the story of the girl Esther, a young girl without parents but who rose up to become a queen in a foreign land and how she saved the Israelites from being destroyed by an enemy. At least that is how most of us see it. However, today God revealed to me how He can transform things and place us where we should be, by getting rid of our enemies and placing us in our rightful places where the enemy may be standing. Just like God, the enemy knows clearly where we belong. Many times, he can decide to take our place and let us keep a distance but at a close watch so that he may destroy us if he detects that we are getting wise and trying to get closer to our rightful position.

When I talk about this, I refer to the story of Mordecai and Haman. Mordecai was a gate keeper at the palace, who had at one time exposed a plot to assassinate the king. Haman however, was a man who had rose up to become greater than all the royals in the palace except the king and who had had all people bow before him in kinda like worship. I say worship because he was so angry when Mordecai didn’t bow before him, that he sought to destroy him and all is people. That is what someone drank of power wants to do when he notices someone who doesn’t submit to him, to destroy. Haman plotted to destroy the Israelites by persuading the king to sign a law that would have them killed and Mordecai by having him hanged on a gallows that he had prepared. However, things changed and everything became what it was supposed to be.

God came out strongly to put His people where they were supposed to be, to lead, not to be slaves nor be destroyed like the enemy (devil) had been plotting through Haman. On the night before the day Haman had plotted to kill Mordecai, the king could not sleep. Why? Because God was at work and there was no way the king would sleep unless the work was complete. God had begun restoring His people to their rightful places. The king remembered about a conspiracy that had been made to kill him and that the man who had exposed it had never been honored. The king could not sleep until that person had been honored. The books of the chronicles had to be searched until when the person was known. (That is what God does; He never lets our good deeds get forgotten.) The king then called for Haman to have Mordecai honored just when he was about to destroy him. Haman was destroyed instead and Mordecai replaced him and both Mordecai and the people of God went back to where God had desired for them to be, to rule.

Things change, the enemy may seem to be there, just hanging there, where you belong for a long time, but soon he will be gone. Don’t try to use evil means to get what is yours. Just pray and trust in God always. Mordecai would have maybe chosen to bow to a human and that would keep him and is people. However, he chose to do right, to do good by protecting the king which was his duty and to worship God alone. He understood that only God could help them and restore them to their place. So today I want you to realize that you can get to where you must be without bowing to evil but by trusting in God. The enemy won’t be in your place forever. He will soon leave through the power of God and you can have what is rightfully yours.

God bless you and keep growing in Him.