Christian Life

People will always hurt us. This is the reality of life. Every believer ought never to forget that offences would come. People will spitefully use us and persecute us – and this will doubtless hurt us. Very much. But in all this, the counsel of God is, KEEP LOVING.

The ability to love can be severely hampered by bitterness (offence). If we think or say that it is impossible for us to love those who cause us hurt, we are merely showing our ignorance in tying hurt with bitterness. But this is not true. Bitterness is not necessarily associated with hurt. How many of us who are parents have not been severely hurt by one or two of our kids? Has this always degenerated into bitterness against such children? Not likely. What is the key issue? It is ILL-WILL. Bitterness ensues when we allow ill-will to be added to our hurt. And that IS offence.

The Bible is clear that we must forgive offences before we can receive forgiveness from God. We are even instructed to bless and pray for those causing us the pain!!! (Matthew 5:44) But how can this be, when the hurt is still burning so painfully? It is by resisting the attempt of ill-will to enter our hearts but rather to give free flow to GOODWILL which is an attribute of the love of Christ that is already spread abroad in our hearts. This is the message of the Cross. It is foolishness to those who are far from God, but to those who have received grace, it is life.

Are you a believer, and offence has already come? Have you been hurt and you are embittered? Willingly release yourself to the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb. You can do it RIGHT NOW. Hand everything over to God and submit yourself under His loving hands. Both the hurt and the ill-will shall be washed away. It doesn’t matter the depth of the hurt.

God is love, and love covers all sins.

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate." (Genesis 3:6)

Like Adam and Eve, most of us live our lives without any conscious thought of the consequences of the choices we make. We take decisions and effect various actions on a continuous basis as if these things are isolated events of life. The truth of the matter is that every human behaviour is dynamically linked to numerous other events in what I call the relational web of life. No thought, speech, or action, by doing them or by failing to do them, is an isolated end unto itself. All occurrences are caused and will also be (part of) the cause of many other occurrences - and these will be in all the strands of the web, physical, social and spiritual.

How limited could the thoughts of Adam and Eve have been! Indeed, what were they thinking? - that they could ignore the words of their Creator and Benefactor and that would be it? No consequences??!!! Or that God did not really mean what He warned them about? I like to imagine that if they had given due consideration to the consequences of disobeying God, they might have exercised great restraint and refrained from eating the forbidden fruit (which they did rather too easily)

In the final analysis, history is merely the report sheet of the consequences of human action and inaction.

Concerning the recent past, I think if Muammar Gaddafi had given proper thought and action to the would-be consequences of his arrogance in handling the Libyan contribution to the Arab spring, he might have taken an entirely different path. But despite the benefit of the Egyptian experience, he stubbornly decided to despise his own people, believing they were absolutely incapable of dishing out unpalatable consequences to him. He had obviously overrated the mollifying effect of his jamahiriya welfarism on the resolve of a people fed up with dictatorship. If only he had permitted himself to be eased off when the ovation was still on. He might even have gotten a little whiff of a pan-African Mandela mystique. But he decided to talk of a "last bullet" - which dutifully came to him. Consequences.

Currently, much rhetoric and drama is playing out globally - Ukraine, ISIS, Palestine, Executive Order, Ferguson, and of course, Iran and her dance with the P5+1. Does any of the players seriously imagine there would not be proper consequences beyond the current power games?

Finally, I want to believe that if you too would just pause to consider and reconsider the consequences of your actions (or lack of action), current and in future, you may begin to see reason to follow a path quite different from the one you have charted. Like you my brother or sister in the Lord, who is yet to accept that the Lord's word are "laws" by which we must live day-to-day and not merely nice suggestions to theoretise about.

Or you too, my brother or sister outside the Lord, it is yet another moment and opportunity to ask yourself, "Why am I still not in a personal relationship with Jesus?" "Have I considered the consequences of this neglect?" "What will be my excuse when the consequences come?"

To all, let us stop living our lives as if there will not be consequences of our choices. There, surely, are consequences, both temporal and eternal.

God bless us all.

Image: Dreamstime.com

 

While the title may appear to give a sense of condemning whoever succumbs to temptation, the posit is not about condemnation but about the need to recognise that the buck of our lives stops with us. We must take full responsibility for our choices regardless of the difficulties that might face us while making those choices. The possibility of certain "grave" temptations may only be a reason for falling - never an excuse. The standard of sin is absolute, once defined, not relative. I have a great number of personal experiences where I succumbed to temptations (I dare say some of them were not even very great temptations yet I fell. lol) but in all these, I could not justify myself on the strength of the gravity of the temptation. I was only grateful that God's mercy was available. So it was of Him who keeps on showing mercy and not of us who have any "case to argue or prove" for failing on the ground that the exam was too tough.

And at any rate, no temptation is ALWAYS and UNIVERSALLY insurmountable. Overcoming a temptation, any temptation at all, is always a possibility as one increases in appropriating the grace of God. Some temptations I fell for some years ago are no longer problematic to me today and some that I am still falling for today are no problem at all for some people higher than me spiritually. I know that soon, I too will overcome them as I grow. This shows that the problem was not the power of the temption to defy us but our own weakness under certain circumstances to resist.

Therefore, while in a status of weakness, we should not excuse ourselves but rather repent and pray as Jesus instructed ("Lead us not into temptation"), for God to make such temptations not to even come our way now, since if we fall, we will not be excused despite our weakness. But we may be pardoned.

So, you have excelled in your path in life. You have acquired much of the world's knowledge, goods, toys, associations, accolades, and wisdom. You now move with the high and mighty. You are dignified.

You are also a Christian.

Therein lies the problem. Your endowments and accomplishments rebel against identifying with "those lowly and ignorant Christians". The continuous need to be approved of those at your social and intellectual circles trumps the imperative to align with and defend the word of truth.

Christ has become an embarrassment to you! It is now beneath your dignity to publicly add your voice to the proclamations of your brethren, or to place your God-given clout at the disposal of the army of God.
You prefer to close your eyes and mouth to the plight of persecuted believers than risk being labelled a bigot or fanatic. Yet, Moses, with far less grace than you, chose "rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt" and Jesus Christ Himself, our Lord and Sanctifier is not ashamed to call believers brethren.

My beloved brother/sister, my counsel to you is to repent and amend your ways before the Lord. Determine now to stand up for Jesus and be identified with all that pertain to Him. I can assure you it is a glorious thing to do.

You have no dignity outside of Jesus.

"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
When it is in the power of your hand to do so.
Do not say to your neighbor,
'Go, and come back,
And tomorrow I will give it,'
When you have it with you." (Proverbs 3:27-28)

This scripture powerfully operated in my life many decades ago when I was in politics. Being the councilor of my ward (political constituency), a young man came to me to have certain documents accredited and confirm him as a bona fide member of the constituency. I checked the papers and found all the claims true. Yet, my natural instinct was to ask him to come for my signature the following day. (Why should he get prompt service so easily? Would that not reduce the dignity of my person and of the office of the councilor? Would the impression not be that we were not busy'?)

Glory be to God, I did not succumb to any of such carnal promptings. I signed his papers immediately and he was overjoyed as he left to pursue his goal (I think it was an appointment he needed the documents for.) I too was greatly pleased that I was able to help somebody progress in life. And it practically cost me nothing!

Now hear the meat of the story:

That evening, it was announced that the president, IBB (Ibrahim Babangida), had terminated the tenures of all of us councilors and chairmen!
I never knew it was my last day in office! I can't imagine what eternal regret I would have had if I didn't sign that boy's papers that day, not to talk of his own needless losses and possibly hatred he would have developed for me personally and public officers in general.

So, as the word of God says, do not delay to do your good deeds.

God bless you.