Dealing with delays

Grateful Heart

Have you ever felt gratitude well up in your heart? Have you in the course of a seemingly ordinary day felt your heart strings pull with inexplicable gratitude to the living God? I had this experience this morning as I gathered with my family in worship to the Lord. I looked around my sitting room and saw nearly every member of my household in the early hours of the morning worshiping and praising the Lord and I was just so grateful to God.

Some of us take going to church for granted, but there are many locations in the world that this is no longer possible. Even in some regions in our country, Nigeria, Christians can no longer hold formal Church services. These locations are fear ridden because of the oppression and bias against Christians. But we can. Any day of the week, we can worship God, formally and informally. This for me is a reason to be grateful to God.

Our children are in private schools where they lift their hands and bless the Lord at their assembly times. Our toddlers come home from school humming songs of praise and worship to the Lord. Songs they learnt at their schools! This for me is true blessing. Too often we take for granted the very important issues of life and get depressed about minor matters. That we know the Lord is a priceless gift to be grateful for.

Have you seen a spiritually lost man lately? Have you noticed how oblivious and dead they are to the things of God? Have you noticed the fact that they have no conscience in the way they treat other people? Have you noticed how unscrupulous some business men are? That they can do just about anything for money? But you are not like that. Do you know that the fact that you have a working and vibrant conscience means that you will not miss God’s ways and His instructions? You, as a believer do not have a reprobate mind, but the mind of Christ. Is this not worthy of praise and worship? When you catch the revelation of what I am talking about you would bow your heart and knees in worship right where you are!

Anyone can buy a car and build a house. You do not need to be a born again Christian to do that. Look around the world, millionaires are one a dozen! Anyone can be a millionaire. But to be saved and heaven bound, to be a co-heir with Jesus Christ, to have a recreated spirit and be in union with God, this my dear friend, is true blessing and true riches. When you have the mind of Christ there is nothing that you cannot create or have in this world, if that is your desire. But those who truly have this blessing at the end of the day do not really want to inherit the earth for their pleasure alone but for the good of mankind. A great man of God once proclaimed, “I have vowed to be a blessing to mankind till I die” This is coming from one of the richest and leading servants of God in our generation. Some of the greatest faith feats in Africa today were done through him, yet his desire is to continue to be a blessing to mankind! The higher we climb in God, the less important material and financial blessings become because at that height we get to see what is truly important in life and to God. May we get there in Jesus name!

So, to see my family gathered together in worship each morning is a reason for me to be grateful to God. You know why, once upon a time we could not do so. It was a major struggle. We had just too many activities and it was not just practicable much as we desired to, but today God has supplied grace and all those so called activities have taken the back burner and we are able to gather daily to worship the only true God who has given us life and gathered us together as a family. It is a dream come true and an answer to prayers. And so joy and gratitude wells in my heart for this living God who reigns forever more! To some this may be trivial, but to me it is a big deal. As a matter of fact it is the deal of all deals!

To teach and establish my children in the fear of God cannot be compared with any car or house that I may acquire now or in the future. Dear friends, let us track our priorities and when we do we would realize that God has been faithful to us. Be grateful! Peace.

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Joy is a Choice.

Joy is not a feeling. It is a spiritual force active in the heart of the believer. It is not predicated on the happenings around us. It is constant in all seasons. It is the strength of the believer. Sadness and sorrow is a focus on self. But Joy is a focus on God! Joy stems from a working knowledge that God can never fail.

To live in this realm you must be deliberate in stirring your emotions in the direction of God’s word. Do not let your emotions have a will of their own. Control them! Joy is a decision away from you.

When we think about what we are thinking about we would be able to arrest depressing thoughts and boot them out of our hearts before they take root and become strongholds.

Sadness, depression and discouragement tell the world that our God is small and incapable to deliver, but joy is a shout of testimony to the world that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only true God and that He never fails!

When you choose joy, you choose God. Joy is a choice!

“Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls—Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

A merry heart

I Will End Well

Conduct in Austere times

The Watchers

Sometime in February this year, I was at a Pediatric hospital with my daughters and met a commotion! All the medical officers were frantically running from one end to the other. We were kept waiting for an unusual length of time and when I inquired, I was informed that a 2 year old child fell off the first floor balcony of a building! The doctors did all they could to stabilize that child but eventually referred him to the teaching hospital in the city.

Again yesterday, we were at the hospital and met with another emergency that kept us waiting long hours. This time a one year old child was left unattended at home and fell off the second floor balcony of a building! The hospital was teeming with friends and relatives of the family as the doctors worked frantically to save the child’s life!

The question is who was supposed to be watching over these children? Children are a heritage of the Lord. They are a gift and blessing and when we have been entrusted with them we must keenly watch over them spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Watching is an integral part of life that is why we have eyes. Anything of value must be watched over otherwise we may lose it. We must be in full awareness of our physical and spiritual environment. No wonder Jesus instructed His sleepy disciples in Matthew 26:41 to “Watch and pray…” Life must be watched over carefully. But the sad reality is that many pray, but not many watch! This is the reason many of us miss the answers to our prayers. We are expected to watch with our physical and spiritual eyes after praying to discern the move of God in our direction. Someone once said that spiritual things are very slippery. And I agree. If you are not attentive spiritually and physically the blessings of God which are constantly coming towards us as believers may slip by us unnoticed. Also when we walk through life with our eyes closed we would soon enough fall into a pit of trouble! Jesus’ full instruction is, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41)

Many do not watch in the spirit and so have embraced enemies as friends and antagonized true kingdom friendships. Apostle Paul understood the place of watching, especially with our spiritual eyes that was why he prayed in Ephesians 1:18 “that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened…” When we have these “enlightened” eyes we will see as God sees.

I have come to the realization that many Christians who pray do not actually expect to have answers or if they do they most often than not believe that the answers would take a long time to come! So they never factor in the watching element in prayers. It is common in communication to expect feedback from whoever we are in dialogue with. It is no different with God. That pause in prayers when you give Him room to revert to you is the ‘watching space’ in prayer. Pause and listen to the Lord because He is longing to have a conversation with you.

In Acts chapter 12:1-16, we see a clear illustration of my point. Herod the king had persecuted the early church and killed one of the Apostles. He further locked up the Apostle Peter who was a pillar in the church. Whilst in prison, the church offered fervent and ceaseless prayers to God for his deliverance. God answered that prayer in one of the most supernatural records in the New Testament. Eventually the supernaturally freed Peter got to the house the Church had gathered for prayers and knocked. A young girl named Rhoda heard the knocks and then Peter’s voice! In her excitement, she forgot to open the door for him, but ran into the room where everyone was praying and announced that Peter was at the door! Guess what? Nobody believed her! They practically told her that she was mad! When she insisted that she was not making up the story, they concluded that she may have seen his angel and not Peter! My point is why pray if you are not expecting God to answer? Many of us are like these brethren in Acts Chapter 12. We are full of prayers, but no expectations! Every day of the week, we gather to pray and some of us even hold all night prayer meetings, but our answers do not equal these prayer activities. Why? We are not watching for the answers!

The moral here is that we have to start to balance our prayer activities with the element of watching. The prophet Habakkuk understood this important fact. He said, ”I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what He will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1) Those who watch are those who are expectant. I implore us today to be expectant and 'open' our eyes. If we do we would be pleasantly surprised how close God has been with us.

Please kindly join me in prayer for the blessed children I earlier mentioned in this article. Pray that the Lord will grant a perfect and supernatural healing without brain damage or physical deformation of any kind! Pray for peace in their homes and come against the spirit of guilt and condemnation that may alight on those who were responsible to watch over them. May the Lord answer us with a mighty deliverance in Jesus name. Amen.

Peace to you in Jesus name. Amen!

Conduct in Austere times

Episode five