WHATEVER IS NOT OF FAITH IS SIN
I knew sin to be disobedience to God’s commandments. But from the day I read from the scripture that whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23) and I meditated on the verse, I had another dimension to my Christian journey. I was able to know the difference between self righteousness and works of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Faith is believing or trusting God, and it is not a one off thing, it is a process that plays out all our fruit of the Spirit- faith, love, joy, meekness, gentleness, goodness, temperance, patience and peace. Believing and trusting God which is a process entails a lot of things, it entails all other fruit of the Spirit. While we are believing and trusting God, we need to be patient (Heb. 6:12, 10:36), we need to persevere, endure and tolerate difficulties and hardships that come our way. We need to have peace with God, ourselves and neighbors (Heb. 4:3, 12:14). Our actions and reactions must edify others (Rom. 14:19). While believing God which is our faith we must love God and our neighbors (Matt. 22:37-40). In a situation where a person is trusting God for a car and he does not see anything wrong in defrauding his employer to buy the car and still claiming to be of faith. This is not faith but sin. Faith entails loving, being patient, gentle, joyful, peaceful, having self-control, being good, and being meek. Whenever you fall short of any of the fruit of the Spirit while believing God, you are not faithful, but sinful. It is either you are faithful or sinful, you cannot be in between. More reason when you have one fruit you have all. Our faith which is our believing and trusting God is the substance (part and pieces) of what we hoped for. We need to understand this faith very well so that we will not be sinful while we are waiting for its establishment (Isa. 7:9). Take for example, I am a bachelor hoping for a wife, evidence of having a wife is my faith, that is believing and trusting God is the part and pieces (substance) of the wife not yet seen, and all I can show for my hope now is my faith (believing and trusting God). Therefore, all that is of faith in getting a wife is believing and trusting God. Which means, crying, getting fed up, lamenting, murmuring, running into secret sins like masturbation, pornography, is not of faith but sin. Some will say, there is nowhere masturbation or pornography is mentioned in the bible, but can one believe and trust God for masturbation? Whatsoever you cannot trust God for is a sin, whatsoever is not of faith is sin, please do away with it, and do not justify it. Believing and Trusting God Our faith is not only centered on what we hope for, but also on our motive for believing God and our attitude towards establishing it. If my hope is to have a car, which is a good thing to have, what is my motive? Is it for a necessity or to let people know I have arrived? What is my attitude towards getting it? Am I going...
read moreYOU CAN DO ALL THINGS
I remember some years ago, during one of the periods of fuel scarcity in my country, I had no fuel in my car, I used the reserve to get to work in the morning and after work I sat in the car not knowing what to do. My CEO was passing by also closing for the day, he got near my car and asked why I was downcast, and I told him I had no fuel in my car to take me home. Then he directed my attention to a sticker on my car dashboard which quoted Philippians. 4:13 which says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He looked at me and jokingly was referring to the sticker ‘this should take you home’, and he left. I did not get his joke, all I could say to myself was,“how could a sticker take me home?” As at that time I had not really known God, though I used to go to church but His words had not penetrated into my hearts the way they are now. Moreover, I never had personal relationship with him. So, I kept on looking at the sticker, reading those words aloud and it got to a point that I had the courage to start my car and believed that the car will take me home even if there was no fuel in the car. I got home after spending more than 4 hours in heavy traffic! From that day I knew there is power in His words all what we are required to do is to believe in them. Faith is believing God (2 Corinthians. 5:7), and Faith is a substantial and real thing (Hebrew 11:1). Every of God’s promise or blessing needs faith to activate it, your own is not to keep on thinking how He is going to do it but to believe that He who has promised has the capability to fulfill His promise. Faith is not a one-time action, it is a continuous process. Put your faith in action!Has God called you into an assignment and you do not know how to start it, and you are now having sleepless night because time is flying away and you have not really done anything about the assignment? He who has called you will also empower you to do that thing He has called you to do. You just need to be faithful and continue putting your trust in Him. Though we are all human, once in a while we get weary and we forget our caller and we focus on one and one million reasons it will not be possible to achieve our goals. We should avoid unnecessary distractions and focus on one and one million reasons we will achieve what we are called to do, this we will achieve by reading His words as often as possible, praying for His empowerment, believing faith is gift from God, and by listening to testimonies of faith. We should live our life by faith according to Galatians 2:20 and Hebrews10:38. We must know clearly that we are saved by faith (Ephesians2:8-9), that we cannot please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6 and Romans 14:23), and that faith gives us the strength to keep going (2 Corinthians4:16-18 and Romans 11:20). I...
read moreLIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
Have you ever thought of why God made you who you are, why you were not made a stone, an animal, and a tree or not even made you at all? Now you saw yourself as a very beautiful young lady or man, or you were born blind, lame, deaf or even dump, has it ever occurred to you that it is not your making? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so we are in the hand of our God (Jer. 18:6). Some people have forgotten God’s factor in their lives, and they believe that they have the right to do whatever they like with it, even to the extent of taking the life they did not create. We have a lot of murder or even suicide cases everywhere, where people feel some people deserve not to exist or some people’s time should be up on the face of the earth. When do we assume the duty of God; when did you turn to God? Or in your own case you cannot hurt a fly, but in your heart you wish that person contesting a position with you dead. We are the clay, and our God is our potter and we are all the work of His hand (Isa. 64:8). So, why are you destroying or do you intend to destroy God’s work? Have you ever thought about how beautiful this world could be if we would just accept God’s work, leave everything the way God has made it? Starting from accepting who we are, do things the way God has commanded us, no adjustment and no discontentment.What a beautiful place this world would be if only we could all have a mindset of embracing life the way it has been fashioned and have tolerance for others who we have been cohabitated together. So why is it that we experience different types of discriminationand marginalization in our society? Ranging from age, sex, religion, race, disability, and so on and so forth, we keep on killing ourselves just because we do not share the same belief, value, ideology, or even background. We seem to forget that it is not our making that we have such differences, right from sex, no one in this world made him or herself who he or she is today, we grew up to know who we are. So why are we humiliating others just because we are stronger, more populated, more intelligent, more influential? Stop making life unbearable for yourself and other people, learn to tolerate, endure or persevere because life is beautiful. Start to see positive side to things, believe things could be better by collective efforts. No one is an island, we all need each other, there is a reason God created each and every one of us, let us give each other a chance of becoming who God has created us to become, stop destroying God’s work and stop being His enemy. We have dropped words like togetherness, partnership, cohabitation for words likediscrimination, marginalization in this era of globalization and technology advancement, when reverse should have been the case. Some people even justified their killings that they are helping God, please know that God is not a destroyer, He is a builder, a creator. How do you see life? Is...
read moreLet The Fire Beautify Your Life
Sometime ago, I was counseling a lady on the phone; she was lamenting and trying to make me see reason with her on why she needs to avoid the challenge she was facing at that time. As she was bringing forth her points, I was also letting her see the reason why she must persevere and endure the hardship in order to allow God to perfect His plans in her life. She would not agree with my view, and it got to a point that I had to raise my voice to utter the following words, “Stop running away from the fire, it beautifies.” After a while, I heard her voice from the other end, “Are you sure fire beautifies?” So, I took it up from there and I explained what I meant by that statement, and after a lengthy discussion we reached a conclusion.She agreed to face the situation no matter what.Today, she is blessing God for not quitting because her life has been beautified. Not all fire beautifies, some are destructive or consuming, and in such a situation you must run dearly for your life toward God, who is the only one that can protect you. Any fire that is taking God from your life is not worth enduring. Fire could be in the form of suffering, hardship, trials, temptation, affliction, examination, and even ailments.Fire could be compulsory, optional, permanent, temporary, but necessary. It could be caused as a result of one’s mistake; it could be allowed for test of faith, or it could be engineered by enemies through the loopholes we ourselves created. The fire we are talking about here is a refiner’s fire; the kind of fire that has the hand of God in it.The furnace of affliction in the family of God is always for refinement, never for destruction.Refiner’s fire that we allow will always lead to perfection of God’s will for our lives. Come to think of it, raw gold that was subjected to furnace of fire will come out refined and purified, but the process of such refinement and purification is always a tough period. This is applicable in our lives today. Though we know quite well that the fire we are facing now is as a result of our mistakes, we know the fire is from enemies as a result of our own sins or carelessness, but we fail to acknowledge the fact that now that we are in Christ, and we have sought for His forgiveness, and we believe He has forgiven us, that we should forget the past and start the present with God without making reference to our dark past (1 John 1:9). What do I mean? Some of us believe that since the affliction caused by our mistakes or sins has not left our lives then it automatically means God has not forgiven us or that enemies are still pursuing us. So we center our prayer on forgiveness and wrestling with imaginary enemies. Some of us have been centering our prayers on these two (forgiveness and killing of enemies) for problems we have been facing for quite a while, and our prayers still remain unanswered. For this we keep on losing our peace, allowing bitterness to creep into our heart. Have you thought of the teaching of...
read morePeace Like A River
Perhaps you gave your life to Christ a while ago and yet you do not have peace of mind. You run from pillar to pole to experience peace, but all to no avail. You cast, you bind, you pray, you fast, but peace becomes a mirage — the more you chase the farther it becomes. You associate and mingle, and even dissociate from friends and relatives to experience this peace, but all you got in return is disappointment. How do you know you lack peace? If any of the following often happens to you, seeing this world as a place of competing with others and not as a place of complementing others; you are not in control of your emotions and reactions; you have personal ambition rather than God’s ambition for your life; you are fond of promoting self rather than promoting God and others; you value physical success more than spiritual success. Selfishness and peace are two things that are in opposite directions; they are two parallel lines that can never meet. If you are selfish, which is lack of love, you can never experience peace. I am not surprised that the two commandments mandated to us by our Lord Jesus Christ teach us how to be selfless (Matthew 22:37-40). Throughout the bible, I have not come across where we were commanded to love ourselves, but several verses in the bible commanded us to love God and our neighbors. Loving ourselves is God’s work, and He has been doing it from the beginning of the world, and He still loves us (Jeremiah 31:3, John 3:16). So, stop doing God’s work! Do what is expected of you—loving God and your neighbors, and you will have peace of mind. Sowing means obeying God’s instructions, God’s words are seeds, stated as commandments in the scriptures and inspirations directly from the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:23). So, sow peace continuously as a seed through the words of God, when it is convenient and when it is not convenient. And you shall reap it as a fruit. As written in the scripture (Hebrews 12:14) to follow peace with all men and holiness, the more you obey the commandments meant for allowing peace to reign, you are sowing peace which you will definitely reap. Let me expatiate on the above mentioned signs of troubled hearts, which are in our lives as a result of absence of peace and other fruit of the Spirit — love, self-control, gentleness, faith, patience, goodness, meekness, joy. LIFE IS A CONTRIBUTION AND NOT A COMPETITION– (SOW LOVE TO REAP LOVE) If you view your life as competing with others, a race to be better than others and not to be the best you can be for your creator, to be the greatest in the whole universe, then you are inviting into your life spirit of strife, jealousy, idolatry, emulations, fighting, fears, lust, and lasciviousness which are in contrary to the spirit of peace. Even the power and zeal to be the best in whatever God has commissioned in our hands is not ours; it is God’s. According to a scripture, Philippians 4:13, which says we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, we have no power of our own let no one boast of it, if we...
read moreInevitable Darkness
There was a day I was having an intensive Bible study of the book of Genesis. I discovered that right from the beginning of time darkness has always been associated with void and hopelessness. I learned that even in the darkness the Spirit of God is always present (Gen 1:2). I realized that it was the darkness that made us know the importance of light, and it made us know the mightiness of God’s power (Gen 1:3). In just a simple utterance God changed a hopeless situation. I was amazed when I read that He separated light from the darkness (Gen 1:4). I thought within me that God should have destroyed darkness and replaced it with light, instead of separating darkness from light and still allow it to be in existence. So, I reached the conclusion that darkness has an important role to play in any creation and that darkness must be experienced before any creation or birth can take place. Bringing this down to our lives, inevitable darkness could be to experience unpleasant conditions, what some people will refer to as calamity or a wilderness experience. Something one did not wish for but unexpectedly materialized in one’s life. It is inevitable because it is unstoppable; the darkness has been predestined because of its importance to instill valuable lessons into our lives, and to usher in a new beginning, a new direction, and a new chapter of our life. Light shines in the midst of darkness. Plants grow during the night, and we sleep during the night. So, why is it that whenever we experience darkness such as, losing a job, the death of a loved one, going through a divorce, etc., we tend to lose our peace, become agitated or even commit suicide? Could it be a result of being fearful of the unknown? Your feelings do not determine how long you will stay in the darkness. Even in the scripture, we read that God said let there be light; it was not that something prompted God to make the utterance, but it was the ordained time to bring forth the Light. In Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, we are made to know that there is a time for everything. Allow God to reach you in that darkness. As stated in Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God was moving even where darkness was. So, in that dejected and lonely place you are, God is with you, His Spirit is around you but God will not force Himself on you until you allow Him to (Rev. 3:20). You need His peace, love, joy, and other fruit of the Spirit when you are in the wilderness, and not until you believe in Him and invite Him into your life can you experience them. Everything your day produces will be determined by you in the night. Preparation, development, and rest are all embedded in the darkness. More reason why enemies are actively operating during the night is because they know activities that cannot be destroyed during the night cannot be destroyed during the day. If you do not do or learn what you are supposed to learn during darkness, you will pay for it during the day. For instance, two candidates who were told to sleep throughout the night to be able to...
read moreA God That Can Never Fail
God is our father and He is “I Am that I Am”. He is“I Am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35, 41, 48, 51), “I Am the light of the world” (John 8:12), “I Am the Door of the Sheep” (John 10:7,9) “I Am the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11,14), “I Am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25),“I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6), and “I Am the True Vine” (John 15:1, 5). Before I had a personal relationship with God I used to take Him for a God that is far away in Heaven; a God that has to take ages to reach, that even when you eventually reach Him, He would take eternity to give answer to one’s prayer. So I considered Him too slow. How wrong I was. Our God, Yahweh, Jehovah Adonai, I Am who I Am is present, accessible, and near to those who call on Him for deliverance (Ps 107:13), forgiveness (Ps 25:11), and guidance (Ps 31:3). His experience is not future expectation but a present reality. His name I Am is self-sufficient and self-existent (Acts 17:25); it stands as a person, an attribute, a source, and an experience. He is wisdom (Proverbs 8). God is who He claimed to be. He is according to His claim. You cannot know Yahweh if you believe that He is not. He is not everything yet He knows everything (Ps 139:7-13). I failed to know who God was because I saw Him as transcendent. I never saw Him as a father that I could have an intimate relationship with because I did not have the wisdom which is Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s wisdom and the word of God. We are called to pursue wisdom above all things; it is more precious than gold and sweeter than honey. God is God. God and all that belongs to God – His wisdom, truth, qualities, love, power, glory, peace, grace, righteousness, consistency, holiness,and splendor – are all appropriate to God, and they are unlike anything else. There is nothing comparable in heaven or on earth. The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ. He is the wisdom we desire. He is the wisdom we must have. Jesus Christ is the personification of absolutely every divine quality – love, truth, beauty, power, peace, grace, and Wisdom. Wisdom is always with God, it abides with his throne. The love of wisdom is the wisdom of God. God has proved what He claimed to be, not an event but a person. Let God be wisdom in your life. He says in Psalm 46 that He is a present help in trouble, and verse 10 says ‘I am God”. He is God of yesterday, and today and forever (Heb. 13:8). He was, He is and He will still be the bread of life, light of the world, door of the sheep, good shepherd, resurrection, the way, the truth and the life, and the true vine. Believe that God is all that He says He is. He was resurrected in the life of Lazarus, He has been resurrected since His death and He will be resurrected in His second coming. He can never fail. Hold on to Him, you must not have an iota of doubt, for He will surely...
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