Little Foxes, Big Time Destroyers! Kill Them Today!

I guess I am in the season of looking at the small foxes in my life because more than ever before, I have been made aware of the fact that the little details really impact our lives and/or our walk with God: so much more than we think. At the end of the day, those little things could actually destroy our lives forever.

Songs of Solomon 2: 15NLT “Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming”

When we give our lives to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us with all of His goodness and we are then empowered to goodness of our God. From our inside, total transformation takes place and we are no longer the same.  As we draw nearer and nearer to God, all those ugly things begin to change. The little foxes have no choice but to leave us because we are now “possessed” by another Spirit which is the Spirit of God. The bible says old things are passed away. However, though there has been a transformation on the inside, we have to get used to acting out the “new us”. According to scriptures, we then begin to work our salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2: 12b -13NLT “work hard to sow the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God working in you, giving you the desire ad the power to do what pleases Him.”

Unfortunately, we think it is okay to carry on as we were. We frustrate the Holy Spirit and distance ourselves from His presence and person because anyway we are busy; so we are unable to express outwardly all that is on the inside of us. Sometimes we are even so busy trying to establish our own righteousness that we leave the Holy Spirit who is on the inside of us trying to let us know that we can not earn the salvation. If only we can submit to Him so we can then easily begin to manifest the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, that is the character that we are expected to manifest as children of God.

Galatians 5: 22NLT “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

The converse is to manifest the fruits of the flesh. How can we be “possessed” by the Holy Spirit yet comfortable with manifesting the fruit of the flesh? The two are just really opposites and they do not connect at any point. This reminds of the saying that “satan has no problems with people going to church as long as they do not manifest the nature of God.” That way, he can use them in the church, to accomplish his purpose.

The impact of these seemingly little things in our lives cannot be exaggerated. These seemingly little things are some of the foxes that can actually destroy our lives forever. Our lives are like tender grapevines blossoming. May we not frustrate the work of God in our lives in Jesus name- Amen.

Stop THAT Haughty Look!

Until recently, I did not realize how terribly God views a haughty/high/proud look. If it is a look that can be described in any of those words, it is the same and God hates it. I always knew it to be bad but not how bad. It must have its origin in hell because it gives expression to Lucifer’s thoughts in Isaiah 14: 13-14.

Proverbs 6: 16KJV “These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood”

The dictionary describes ‘haughty’ as blatantly and disdainfully proud. So a haughty look would be a blatantly and disdainfully proud look which is why God has a thing about it.

Proverbs 16: 5 “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord”….. Isn’t this fearful?

Very often, people feel it necessary to give other people that look, as they say “to put them in their place.” This should not happen amongst Christians because only small minded people feel the need to make other people small and God has made us big minded by giving us a “sound mind”. A sound minded person is empowered by the Holy Ghost to see man as God sees him. If you understand who you are in Christ, then you won’t need to make anyone small. You want to make them small because you see yourself as small and hope to bring them under that ‘small you” which suggests that you consider the other person too high for you to reach.

The God who made us in His image and likeness is the greatest and He never has to prove anything. If you don’t accept his “Almightiness,” that would be your challenge to resolve. It will not add to or take away from Him. A lion never has to prove his “lion hood”. The Lion of Judah made us in His image and likeness and saved our souls so that we can be restored to being just like Him. If you understand what that means, then you won’t need “the look”. You are who you are inspite of what anybody else is.

Strangely, Proverbs 16: 18 says “haughtiness goes before destruction; humility precedes honor.” No wonder Lucifer fell. That look is empowered by satan to destroy people. Remember the maid that looked at Peter just before he denied Jesus as they sat around the fire? Her look was so negatively empowered that Peter feared.  Proverbs 21: 4KJV “An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin”

Ladies particularly, please don’t do it, don’t teach it to your children and don’t let anyone teach them either. Let us watch out for the next generation of Christians.

Christian Challenges - Your Pathway to Higher Heights!

Life sometimes seems so complicated. After giving much thought to life’s challenges, I have come to the conclusion that life is just tough. Please bear with me because I may be wrong. I tried to understand how people who do not have Christ cope, it must be tough. This gives me greater reason to empathize with such people. No wonder some take their own lives. I am grateful for Christ in my life - a God that is a strong support; absolutely dependable, one that listens to everything I have to say to Him and yet is not moved by emotions to do just whatever I want but only does what will ultimately do me good.

Please tell me – how do you cope? I have heard some believers say that as a Christian, you only face difficulties when you are in sin but that has not been my experience. I would have thought I was deceiving myself but for the story of Jesus at Gethsemane and also the scripture immediately below.

 Ecclesiastes 9: 2KJV “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked;”

My confidence however, is in the fact that He goes through every challenge with me and after several challenges, I am now always confident that He will bring me through each one a victor and that with each victory; I enter a new level of glory. I guess it was in similar circumstance that Paul wrote in

2 Corinthians 7: 14 NLT “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever”.

You know there are times when I think I know my way out of my challenges. My head tells me a temporal solution though at the time I’m thinking it is a permanent solution and I just want to sort it all out but I have learnt over time that God is working behind the scenes to give me the victory. I am learning to wait on Him and His pattern for victory. His victory is not only final but last forever.

Ecclesiastes 3: 14NLT “And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it.”

It surely helps if one could tell the duration of each challenge but unfortunately we can’t. However, it helps to understand what season of life one is in at every point. That knowledge helps. Inability to identify what season of life one is in makes a man even more miserable because instead of riding the storm, you try to fight.

Ecclesiastes 8: 6-7KJV “Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon Him. For He knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be? ”

If you are right now in one of those seasons, rest assured, He will not only bring out but also take you higher.

Come Back To God Today, His Extravagant Love Is Waiting For You.

I met a young man who attends the same church as me this morning. He acted a bit embarrassed to see me but then we started to talk and I mentioned that I had not seen him in church lately. I had barely completed the sentence before he asked me if I had enough time to stand and talk. Of course I immediately had the time.

He then told me how he thought to stay away because a few days before one of the Sundays he somehow found himself smoking cigarettes and before the next Sunday, he was in fornication. He had a lot more to say but I thought it was unnecessary. The look on his face already was too painful to allow him go on. As a person, I am not easily moved by the looks on people’s faces but there was something about this look that touched my heart.

Such is the power of sin and the strength of pain that it can cause. Also, it describes the kind of joy the devil offers. One that is temporal and pleases the flesh immediately but the ultimate goal is pain. Whether you feel the pain immediately thereafter or a long time after, the point is you still feel pain. The worse kind of pain is the one that disconnects you from the ultimate source of life and joy; that pain is meant to destroy you and that is what the devil offers. Where like this young man, one starts to run away from God because of the sin and gets into deeper trouble, suffers emotional turmoil and may end up totally disconnected from God.

John 10: 10NLT “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

The pain the enemy brings does not even cause one to sorrow to repentance. It causes depression which is at the level of the flesh and anything you think to do to make you feel better will be incapable of doing so and will only take you deeper and deeper into the flesh moving you further and further away from God. There is a witness in the Spirit of every believer when we do wrong, God is unhappy because we have willfully disobeyed Him. That witness creates a Godly sorrow which works repentance. It’s a sorrow in the Spirit which cannot be assuaged by fleshly things. It is the kind of sorrow that drives you to your maker, father and the true lover of your soul.

2 Corinthians 7: 10NLT “For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death”

If you are reading this blog and you are in the same state as the young man I saw this morning, please know that God feels your absence. He misses you a whole lot and is longing for your return. Whilst He is unhappy about your disobedience, I believe your returning is more important to Him. It is so important that He shed the blood of His son for this purpose.

It's Time To Be Committed!

Recently I have been thinking a lot about a few words like commitment, discipline and some others. It is sad that these words that seemed very relevant in society particularly in the lives of Christians are becoming irrelevant. Today they have become words we explain away and hate to think about. It is sad that Pentecostals appear to be the worst culprits in this regard. Though God requires us to be committed and disciplined, we allow ourselves to be subject to the leading of our flesh and think it is okay to do whatever we feel like doing and whenever we feel like doing those things inspite of the commitments that we had made. Unfortunately, what we are saying is that it is okay not to be dependable.

Psalm 15: 1 & 4NLT “Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill...those who despise flagrant sinners, and honor the faithful followers of the Lord, and keep their promises even when it hurts.”

My dictionary tells me that commitment is an agreement or pledge to do something. Also it is a state of being obligated or emotionally impelled to do something. When we commit to a cause or anything, we ought to do everything reasonably possible to see it. Commitment is not something you are compelled to do, you make a decision to do that thing but when you make that commitment, God expects us as Christians to see it through. Indeed heaven empowers us to see our commitments through.

James 5: 12bNIV “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no or you will be condemned.”

Unfortunately it is not so today in the church and our excuse for our disgraceful behavior is the liberty we have in Christ. We forget that the bible says we should not use the liberty God gives us to please the flesh but is that not what we are doing?

Our God wants us to be like Him but it is sad that we are becoming more and more like the devil who keeps no commitment. This is the biggest problem we have with believing God. We are so unreliable and so totally uncommitted to keeping any commitment we make that we are unable to accept in our minds that God will be committed to keeping His word. The sad thing is that we actually make jokes of people that expect us to keep our word. We say they are stupid in believing that we would do what we committed to doing. No wonder we don’t even take covenants seriously anymore. As far as we are concerned you just make them to be broken. Please where is the church going today? Do you know that cultists take covenants more seriously than we do now?

I don’t think anybody is born committed. We are either taught commitment by our parents or we acquire the attribute as we grow up. If we fail to acquire it, when we give our lives to Christ and He comes to indwell us, it is one of the attributes that we then naturally acquire because it is in the nature of God. All we have to do is discipline ourselves to ensure that we reveal that which we have on the inside. The world cannot be changed by a people who have no sense of commitment to anything. “To thine own self be true.” Review your own life, if you fail in that area, you can always ask God for help.