Set Your Face like Flint … You Shall Fulfill Your Destiny!

It takes a lot of courage to succeed when one is walking with God. For every believer who has decided to go forward this year, you need courage; courage which comes from meditating on God’s word day and night and then living in obedience to that word. Even just ignoring the haters takes courage. Did you know that there are haters in our midst? They are believers too but they must be some of the wolves in sheep’s clothing and on assignment from hell to frustrate the true ‘sheep’ from fulfilling their destinies.  These haters would gossip, say hateful/hurtful untruths about you but you must be courageous enough to ignore them and keep with the business of going forward. They want you to either fall back or remain stagnant; if you keep stopping for or looking back at them, you won’t go forward. 

Ecclesiastes 11: 4 “Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.”

The heart of man is deceitful, and has great capacity to think up vile things. Only through the Holy Spirit can it be controlled. So, other than to pray, there’s nothing you can do to fix another person’s evil heart. All your efforts to reach them will only be explained away by their hearts. You will be wasting valuable time, effort and spiritual energy that should add to taking you forward. An evil heart can only see or hear evil in all that you do or say. If you are reading this blog and you know your heart gets vile, it is time to make the required effort to fix it; and no one else needs to know, just be true to yourself.

Jeremiah 17: 9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows it? 

If when people share their dreams with you, you become envious or feel like pulling them down, then you have a problem you need to deal with. It is important how your heart responds when people share their great testimonies and/or dreams. You can’t ignore that response if it is vile. The problem with life is that you will ultimately not go forward if you don’t want other people to go forward. You may think you are ahead until you find that whilst you are still on the same spot, the others have caught up with you and even moved on ahead of you. It is time for heart examination again. Don’t let your heart deceive you. It’s a trick of the devil. If it’s bad, fix it. It’s never too late to fix to do so. If you tell yourself the truth, you can with God’s help submit that heart to the control of the Holy Spirit. 

Isaiah 50: 7 “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore, I have set my face like a stone, determined to do his will. And I know that I will not be put to shame.”

When you think about it, selling Joseph to the Egyptians was not the smartest way to keep him from realizing his dreams; but evil minds come up with the silliest of ideas. It would have been easier to control Joseph’s life if he was with them and under their control. Selling him off albeit as a slave, was giving him an opportunity to be free from them and then attain to the heights that was his destiny. Unfortunately for them, all their effort to prevent themselves from bowing to him only made them end up bowing to him many years after. For such is the power of God. In trying to kill the dream, they actually prepared the way for its physical manifestation. Keep running; don’t stop! The haters don’t know this but they are working to ensure you fulfill your destiny.

Don’t Worry!!! Worrying Would Hold You Bound!!!

One of the things God counsels us not to do is worry; but if you are like me, you forget this counsel all the time so this blog is for you. You just can’t help but worry from time to time and at those times, you feel like telling anyone who tries to remind you not to worry off. You wonder if they know what they are talking about or sometimes you feel like they just want to say something though they have nothing to say; so they say the first stupid thing that occurs to them. You don’t say it to them directly but the thoughts are somewhere in your head and you are wondering if they understand what you are going through. My counsel today, from one “worrier’ to another is this - take God’s counsel and fight worry. If you are used to worrying, it would have to be a fight to get away from it but it is a fight you will win.

Philippians 4: 6 “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”

I won’t be surprised if your first reaction to this scripture is “is it possible?” but it is. God is always right and knows what He is talking about. He won’t ask anything of us that is not possible. I have found that all the worrying in the world will not add to move you forward; instead it actually sets you back. When you worry, you are dwelling on a thing and not letting go off it; you are remaining in the place of that thing and your life has actually stopped but you don’t know. You are wasting valuable time. Worrying may appear to be producing solutions but in truth, it never does. You just turn the same ugly situation or challenge over and over in your mind until you are either sad enough to be depressed or you are stressed out. Some have ended up in the hospital for all of these reasons. Guess what? And they still did not have the solution to their problem. 

Psalm 55: 22 “Give all your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.”

Worry is not a state of mind that God ordained. It certainly does not speak of peace. Since God made us, He must know what we are made of and is well aware that we are not built for worrying so He says for us to pass on the entire burden to Him. As soon as we find ourselves beginning to worry, we need to pass it on to Him. It can come but do not let it find a nest in your heart; of a truth, it is energy sapping. If you continue in worrying, you are putting all your strength into negativity and leaving very little or no spiritual strength for believing. It is interesting to note that you cannot be focused on believing whilst worrying. Worrying and believing do not run concurrently; the two do not go together. As often as you find yourself beginning to worry, you need to pass it on to God.

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

The longer we focus on worrying, the less faith we have. Before long, our eyes are off God and we feel the need to resolve the issues ourselves and mostly in the wrong way because our decision would most likely be wrong since it was taken in a distressed state. Since we want to go forward, we must be very deliberate about casting our cares on God. It is an attitude that we have to cultivate even if it does not come to us naturally so that the peace of God which is beyond understanding can garrison our hearts. When the peace of God rules in our hearts, we definitely make better decisions and then go forward.

Think On The Right Things That You May Go Forward

I am definitely a believer in continuous self-assessment and I believe that the bible admonishes us to do that so that we can make appropriate corrections and then move forward. So, to my mind, self- examination is a good thing especially when God in His mercy gets involved and helps one see truly who they are. You can argue with other people but when you see for yourself how bad or good you are, then there’s no one to argue with. The Holy Spirit will be sure to show you exactly how God views the real you that no one may know. He will reveal to you your true motives and thoughts of your heart. The problem then becomes what you do with the information God reveals to you about yourself bearing in mind that information by itself is useless; it only becomes useful and valuable when you put it to good use. Until then, it only has the potentials to be valuable.

1 Corinthians 11: 28a “But let a man examine himself.’

The reason God gets involved in this self-assessment or examination is for us to make appropriate corrections that will help us go forward. It is neither to get trapped in the past nor is it to keep you on that spot so that you are neither going forward or backward. God in revealing the things to you is actually working to make you go forward. We must learn to deal with the things that need to be dealt with, put them behind us and focus on the goal that is set before us. We must learn to put behind us the things that need to be put behind us. Some of us have developed insecurities from past situations; refusing to deal with them and move on, we have remained in one spot: always and only seeing life mostly through those situations, wrongly judging almost everything therefore, and making the wrong decisions. This is so terrible because you end up never accurately discerning any situation and frustrating people. For every such person, it is time to move on. Focusing on these mistakes cannot take you forward. God let you see them so you can deal with them, move on and not make them anymore.

Isaiah 50: 7 “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore, I have set my face like a stone, determined to do his will. And I know that I will not be put to shame.”

Sometimes we spend too much time focusing on the things that are wrong in our lives leaving ourselves very little time to build on the good ones. Interestingly, you will only make more mistakes by focusing on those wrong things. If we focus on the good ones, building on them and asking God for grace to actualize them, we would go forward. We can’t afford to let our lives rotate around those bad ones. We have to push our minds to focus on the good things so that we can bear the right fruits. One does not become a saint by remaining in perpetual sorrow for wrong done. You become a saint because your sorrow has worked repentance. Thereafter, you are to focus on the abundant life that is yours by reason of you becoming a saint. Please let us think on the right things that we may live right and go forward. 

Philippians 4: 8 “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

It’s a New Beginning – Forget the Past as You Press…

Happy New Year! Thank you for continuing to read my blog in this New Year. I want to thank you again because you are the reason God has allowed me do this. The mere fact that you are reading this also tells me that God has been good to you in bringing you into 2014. Even if you are not in the state you would like to be in right now, you are at least well enough to read this blog and for that, we must give God the glory. Let me assure you that as long there is life, there is the possibility of a new beginning and/or hope. Please take that opportunity, trust Him again for a new beginning. Today I write for every one that has trusted God for so many new beginnings and yet don’t think they have had any new beginning in a long time, please believe again and strengthen your hope.

Philippians 3: 13 “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.”

It is a new year and another year to press forward. I know you might be tired of pressing; could even be because you have pressed so many times and never really gone forward. You may even be wondering why you should try again. You are probably tired of hearing people tell you to believe again but you have to. I can imagine how tired you are and maybe rightly so; but it’s not your strength you need to try. You have tried to believe for too long in your strength; please ask for grace. The grace of God is in abundance for us to lean on to carry us through. Apart from encouraging yourself to believe, you also have to learn to lean on God for grace to trust again. The fact that it hasn’t happened all this time does not mean it will never happen except and only if God has told you that it can never happen.

1 Kings 18: 43 “Then he said to his servant, ‘Go and look out toward the sea.’ The servant went and looked, then returned to Elijah and said, ‘I didn’t see anything.’ Seven times Elijah told him to go and look.”

To see that promise you have trusted God for fulfilled, you may have to forget past disappointments. You may have to forget the number of years you have believed, the pain from disappointment that came with realizing that it wasn’t happening and having people make fun of you for believing; then set your eyes on God who has the power to bring to pass that which He has promised. Thoughts from the past don’t just disappear; they struggle to remain so as to hold you bound to the past. It has to be your decision to put the past behind you. Every time they try to return, you have to insist that those are not the thoughts you want to think, cast them out and focus on the thoughts you want to think. 

Proverbs 3: 5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.

Please remember that God is our focus as we trust again. Don’t look out for signs that will tell you whether or not that which you have trusted for is about to happen. God does not have to work in the same way always nor does He have to leave signs that show He is about to do something; sometimes He moves suddenly to bring to pass His word so we are not allowed to lean on our understanding. He does not always have to work in the same way. He has been known to send rain even without clouds. If we keep looking out for the signs, we may get very discouraged and not see the promise fulfilled; as the hymn writer says, He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. Have a blessed 2014.