REALITY CHECK: Is your mind open to the word of God?

Some wives waste time trying to re-train their husbands; abandoning the children they ought to be training in the process. By the time they realize they can’t change their husbands, their children are too old to be trained. I say to such wives, you can’t change your husbands. He is too old to be re- trained by you. If he has challenges, leave him to God and focus on training your children. Today, I am going a step further to say to everyone reading this blog – you cannot change any adult except they decide to change and guess what, not even God can. It takes man allowing his/her will to be engaged by the truth (the Word of God) for change to occur despite the capacity and/or potency of the word to transform.  

Romans 12: 2 “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you.

You have to expose yourself to something else for you to change. You can’t be infl

uenced by something you know nothing about. So, for the word of God to transform a life, the mind of the person has to be exposed to the word. To be exposed to something is not just to hear it but to have an open mind toward it. You have to either deliberately or inadvertently give that thing the opportunity to influence you for it to have that power. So that you can be in church every day, listening through every sermon and yet not be transformed because your mind is closed to the word of God.

Being fair to one’s self is giving yourself the opportunity of hearing the word even if you elect to reject it at the end. The only thing we are to shut our minds to is evil, concerning which the bible admonishes that we remain totally ignorant. Sadly, this is the one thing believers often have an open mind toward in our day so that we are also beginning to have “gray areas” arguing that bad or good is based on perception. Sometimes our minds are so closed that we can’t help but approach God and/or His word with a closed mind. Unfortunately, this deprives one of fresh revelation because even if God was shouting, you will only interpret His word through your closed or set mind. 

1 Corinthians 14: 20b “Be innocent as babies when it comes to evil”

Unfortunately, the greatest victims of the closed mindset are often stubborn or strong willed believers. Before you accuse boisterous believers since such traits are more easily exposed in them, check that you are not quietly defiant because it is the same offence with the same consequences. Such people hardly expose their minds to thoughts that challenge them, not even God’s. They are so quick to speak that while you are speaking, they are forming their next argument so they reject your views without giving themselves the benefit of hearing you. In their own eyes, their opinion is always best.

They are often convinced that if you listened to them enough to understand them, you would agree with them. If they respect you, they may go quiet after a while but if you have the same discussion a few days after, they say exactly the same thing they said the last time reaffirming that they remain where they were. Even when they manage to hear God, they have explanations for why they cannot obey Him and don’t know it is disobedience; the thing is though they heard, they interpreted Him through their mindset. They believe God understands but the thing is this - our disobedience does not really affect God, instead it keeps us on a longer than necessary journey to success.

Some things are serious; the process must be hidden until the work is complete

The Easter story is truly an amazing one. I like the fact that the stone that covered the tomb was rolled away. We assume that it was rolled away for Jesus to come out but we don’t know for certain that He walked out through the door. He is a Spirit and could have left in any way that He chose. After all the bible tells us that the apostles were in a room praying when He appeared in their midst. Though we don’t know why, God must have had a reason for making obvious the fact that the stone was rolled away. I would like to suggest that one of such reasons may be that He wants us to know that He sometimes goes step by step ensuring everything is sorted out so that we will be comforted when He elects to do a step by step work in our lives.

John 4: 24 “For God is a spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” 

We often expect God to upturn due process for us “since He is God and controls all things” but if the stone needed to be rolled away for Jesus, then we must know that our God is orderly and honors due process except in exceptional cases. Maybe He wants everything done perfectly in your case so He may not upturn a process for you just because He can but He will still come through. Interestingly, though raising Jesus was the most important miracle that weekend, it was not the dramatic. We are told though that it was an act of God by the Holy Spirit; but the lesser job of rolling away the stone was so dramatic even the angel could not be ignored because of his appearance. God sometimes works behind the scenes to bring to pass the real blessings so don’t stress if there is yet no drama around you.

Mathew 28: 2 – 4 “Suddenly there was an earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it. His face shone like lightning, and His clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw Him, and they fell into a dead faint.”

The real miracle was the resurrection of Jesus which was done quietly. God does not need a lot of noise to do what He wants to do in our lives. He has a way of distracting the enemy while He is working out His purpose. When God begins to work blessings in our lives, He often hides it. I dare to suggest that He does not like people toying with unfinished jobs. The problem with us however, is that we like to announce that God is working whilst the work is in progress. Instead of hiding, a strong desire to be relevant draws us out of hiding because we can’t wait to show others that there is something happening in our lives. We feel a compelling need to let others know that “though we are going through difficulties, things are happening in our lives too.” In that process the announcement is too soon and the enemy attacks aborting the process.

Mathew 28: 7 “And now, go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and He is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there.

There is a time for everything under the sun so there is a time for announcement of the blessings and God does that Himself. It was the angels that announced to them that Jesus had been raised and gone ahead of them to Jerusalem. Jesus could have done it Himself but He did not. Don’t be in a hurry; He will make the announcement when He is ready.

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.