YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO ‘GO IT’ ALONE

Easter to my mind, is the most significant Christian celebration. It is the essence of Christianity; for if the reason for Easter did not happen, then we would probably still be dead in sin today. I recognize that it was the plan of God borne out of love for us but I want to celebrate Christ who put aside His own desire and followed through on His commitment to God by dying on the cross, despite the pain, and was raised from the dead. This is definitely my best season of the year so I thank God for giving us the reason to celebrate Easter and celebrate the Christ of Easter.  

John 18: 11 “But Jesus said to Peter, ‘put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?”

Having gone through a few stages of life and seeing the kind of commitment life demands, I realize that it is one thing to commit to doing something and another thing to see it through especially when the pain begins and you know you have the option of walking away instead of going through with it. Indeed from the story of Jesus, it is apparent that destiny journeys are often lonely journeys which make them tougher. Jesus circumstance was particularly bad because we are not told that He was aware of any benefits that will accrue to Him as a result of His dying before He accepted to die; He simply accepted to die for mankind and not for a name above all other names and He already had an exalted potion because He was God.

Luke 14: 27 “And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.”

Jesus story also affirms to me that no one can travel this destiny fulfilling route with you to the very end nor can anyone do it for you. If you are a crowd loving person, you just may never make it. The people you are relying on were not there when you made the commitment; they don’t understand it and may never understand or be committed to it. You just can’t blame people because they would rather not help with carrying the cross you have chosen to carry, no matter how close they are to you. Indeed they may be carrying their own cross. The most one can expect from people really close to them is that they do not try to frustrate your own effort to keep your commitment. There is only so far anyone can go with you.

John 19: 17 “Carrying the cross by Himself, He went to the place called Place of Skull (in Hebrew, Golgotha)”

So as Jesus started His journey to the cross, He went to the Mount of Olives with His disciples to pray. The bible says it was something they did often; but on this particular occasion, Jesus knew He had a burden that His disciples did not have and so He left them behind to pray by Himself. He was about to begin a journey to fulfill a commitment He made and He had to go it alone. We must like Jesus, sometimes, recognize that it is not another’s price to pay and not even your spouse. You have to recognize that you are different and that your responsibilities are different so that you will have to go a little further to pray. We must know when to withdraw from the others if we must fulfill our destiny. 

LEAVE THE SMALL THINGS

King Saul started out a good and humble man but became so blinded he was unable to discern as a result of which he made wrong choices. He also became so self-obsessed that he did not know when, as we say in Nigeria, “his cup was full” and so short-sighted he based he could not see beyond the immediate. Unfortunately he lost his throne as a result and a lot of us believers are losing our God given gifts for similar reasons despite that we have the Spirit of wisdom to guide us. The thing is we are often too overwhelmed by emotion to do as He suggests. There is an urgent and compelling need to ‘understand the times’, whether it is with regard to a relationship or a business, state of affairs in the society etc., if we will make appropriate decisions and suffer less loss.  

1 Chronicles 12: 32 “From the tribe of Issachar, there were 200 leaders of the tribe with their relatives. All of these men understood the signs of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take.”

There is a category of people that “do not know when to stop.” These people “cross the line” with others going on notwithstanding what response they are getting. They are so wrapped up in themselves that they get carried away and refuse to acknowledge that they are not getting their desired result. Sadly, such people often suffer loss of God given gifts in the form of relationships and then they don’t understand what went wrong. Of course it can never be their fault that anything went wrong since they are so nice. Fortunately, these are not our focus today. 

Today, I am focused on believers who like Saul, are so blinded by their overwhelming desire to get what they want when they want it that they have become short-sighted only seeing the now and unable to see the impact of their actions on their future. Such people often suffer great losses, even irreplaceable ones. When Saul should have been worried about Samuel’s prophecy that he had lost the kingdom, all he could think about was protecting his image so that by the time he realized he had lost the kingdom, it was too late to fix it. Just like such believers, Saul was so wrapped up in himself he did not realize he had “crossed the line” with God and had walked away from a God given gift. For us today, the gift could be anything from a business to a relationship and so on. 

1 Samuel 15: 27 “As Samuel turned to go; Saul tried to hold him back and tore the hem of his robe. And Samuel said to him, ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to someone else-one how is better than you. And he who is the Glory of Israel will not lie, nor will he change his mind, for he is not human that he should change his mind!” The Saul pleaded again, ‘I know I have sinned. But please, at least honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel by coming back with me so that I may worship the Lord my God.”

There are some things that nobody will tell you; so we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us assess ourselves. So we can then begin to walk toward correcting ourselves. Don’t ever take anything God gives you for granted; it may not always be there. Saul realized too late that he had lost the throne and decided it was best to kill his successor; he did not realize that he was trying to fix in the physical, something already upturned in the spiritual for heaven had taken back the throne since he did not understand his purpose on it.

Are you crippling believers? Please stop! It’s about destiny.

 My pastor’s sermon yesterday was awesome and it is the inspiration for this blog. So he mentioned the “crippled believer” whom he likened to the crippled butterfly in that story of the butterfly that was assisted by the onlooker who feeling the pain of the butterfly that was struggling to get out of its cocoon and having little understanding of the situation himself, broke the cocoon to make it easier for the butterfly not realizing that God in His wisdom had worked things out such that in that process, the butterfly is strengthened to fly and fulfill its destiny. Unfortunately, that quick relief would cripple the butterfly making it impossible for it to fulfill its destiny which is the fate of many believers today. 

Unwittingly, a lot of us believers work for the devil by responding to a situation in another life, like the onlooker in the butterfly story; also with very little understanding of the situation since you don’t care enough to understand the situation. Sadly, the fact that you did not know your assistance will ultimately cripple the believer, does not change the consequence. Maybe when we start to look beyond ourselves to the crippling effect of our fleshly responses to situations in the lives of others, we will see the compelling need to turn to the Holy Ghost, who is our guide, for an appropriate response at such times. Trust me, His response is swift but if the voice of your flesh is too strong, you may not hear Him. 

Jesus was full of compassion, he had emotions and could be emotional, like when He wept for Lazarus, but He never responded to a situation emotionally. He always did the will of His father. We often delude ourselves arguing that being compassionate is being emotional which is not correct. Even my dictionary tells me they are different. It says to be “compassionate” is to be touched by the pain/difficulties of another, to empathize and desire to do something about the difficulty. Whilst, to be emotional, is to be excessively affected by emotion rather than reason or an insincere and effusive demonstration of sentimental friendship and an involuntary physiological response to a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data which in bible parlance is flesh.

It is good to be compassionate but our response must be divinely guided or carefully thought through at the very least. Even smart unbelievers would listen to the voice of reason so that though they may not be led by God, they often provide reasonable responses even garnering help from others where they think they are unable to individually provide all the necessary help not caring who gets the glory. Emotional people, believers or unbelievers, will respond according to their feeling not thinking of the ultimate impact. Of course they don’t reason so they do not adequately assess the situation before they swing into emotional activity assuaging their emotion and/or conscience. 

Thank God Jesus was not emotional in His decision making otherwise we may not be saved. Despite the strength of the emotion that overwhelmed Him as He thought on the pain of the cross, He yielded to the will of the father. Emotional people do not go the long haul. Going wherever their emotions go, they must leave whenever they feel hurt. Life is all about them and how they feel. Often very selfish, they smolder you with what they insist love is, which it isn’t, unwittingly crippling you making it impossible for you to fulfill your destiny.  They struggle with divine counsel and don’t listen to the voice of reason because they are overwhelmed by emotions and every other person is wicked. We all have emotions but we must refrain from letting them determine our responses. The price we pay for that is too much.

The enemy is coming against us like a flood …

Spiritual warfare is more intense now than ever before; the enemy has come against the church like a flood; unfortunately, we never saw the attack coming and are ill equipped. We always thought that as believers we should not have any serious challenges so we have been lulled into deep sleep. We don’t even lean on God enough for the Holy Spirit to lift a standard. Yet the enemy attacks sending the hosts of hell against believers in an overwhelming manner, creating the impression that there’s no escape, no solution and deliverance is impossible. If you take the issues apart, you will find that they are not so bad. He deliberately brings them together complicating matters and confusing us; but our God is not confused and He knows how to undo and deal with all the issues from their very root. 

Isaiah 59: 19b KJV “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”

Be not deceived, there is not a challenge in life that is insurmountable. The Holy Spirit is ready with the standard that needs to be lifted up. That standard may not necessarily be the solution to the problem but it definitely ensures that the force of the enemy does not hit you like a flood. So that though he was coming like a flood, the effect of the barrage when it gets to you is like water from a sprinkler making it possible for you to see through the problems and decipher the issues. This can only happen by the Spirit. It is always the style of the enemy to make it look worse than it really is. As the Holy Spirit lifts the standard and you are able to see through the flood, you have to look through it to see God and what He is able to do; you then cast your care on Him and are able to renew your hope and strength. 

1 Peter 5: 7 “Give all worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 

When we give our worries to God, we must make the effort to leave them with Him. I say “make the effort” because satan is consistently trying to ensure we take them back but we must resist the temptation to do so and anytime we find that we have fallen for his trick, we must be quick to relinquish them to God for they are too heavy for “earthen vessels” to bear. God will not only make the troubles simple, but resolve them; maybe not in the way that we expect, but in the way that is best for us. The problem sometimes is that we don’t really want the Lord’s interference because we don’t want to lose control over the final outcome since we know exactly what outcome we want and we fear that if we leave the resolution completely to God, the solution may not be our desired outcome. Let me assure you, He does the best at all times.

Joshua 6: 1“Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in.”

The devil was certain that he had sealed God’s promise from the benefactors of the promise, Israel, so they could not enter the fullness of that which God had ordained for them meaning their joy would not be full. The problem seemed insurmountable for the city was ‘shut up to heaven’; but satan forgot that Israel had/has a God who sits in the heaven of heavens and for whom the earth is a footstool. Once the children of Israel passed on this problem to Him, He gave them a strategy which He facilitated and the strategy had the insurmountable barriers coming down. He wants to do the same for us if we let Him.