What Will You Do?

– Author Unknown

As you read this think about what you would do!

A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of the men mistakenly kicked a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or bothering to look back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.

ALL OF THEM, BUT ONE!

He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him and told one of them to help call his wife to inform her that he would be taking a later flight. He waved them goodbye and then returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did.

The owner of the toppled apples was a blind 16-year-old girl! She was crying softly. With hot tears of frustration running down her cheeks, she helplessly groped for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping to help her, and no one showed any concern care about her plight.

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table, and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.

When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears. He added, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.”

As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister….” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She said, “Are you Jesus?”

He stopped in mid-stride totally bewildered. When he regained his composure, he slowly made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his mind: “Are you Jesus?”

Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life, and grace.

If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.  It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.

You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Meditation: For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps. – 1 Peter 2:21

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

Nail in the Fence

Author Unknown

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.”

That is the reason the Bible admonishes us that we should “be swift to hear, slow to speak, [and] slow to wrath;” because “the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

Meditation: So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; – James 1:19

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

An Effective Insulator from Sin

Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.
– Psalm 119:11

Sin costs us a lot of things. Although it may seem pleasurable at the point of committing it, but the consequences of sin is usually undesirable, the harvest more grievous than the seed, and the impact of the consequences far-reaching. “Had I known…” is the common statement that follows the consequences of sin.

A whole nation has been wiped away in biblical or classical history because of their wrongdoings, not to talk of people dying by the day because of sins. God had decreed that the wages of sin is death; not that He rejoices in the death of sinners, His heart’s desire is always that all may come to repentance and be reconciled to Him. Oftentimes, the death that results from sin may not be physical. It could be spiritual, emotional, marital, academic, career, death of a dream, financial, etc.

However, because God does not desire the death of anyone in whatever form, He has offered us a lifeline to help us live above sin. True, it is very hard for a mortal to live without sinning. But, it is not impossible. That is perhaps the reason God inspired the Psalmist to affirm that by diligently internalising the word of God, he would not sin against God.

In other words, he is saying that by making time and effort to ingest the word, he had apprised himself with the knowledge of the moral will of God concerning various matters of life, so that when he needed to take an action, he would not sin against God. By having a working knowledge of the word, thereby knowing the will of God, he was insulating himself from the lures of sin. That means he was insuring himself from the different forms of death that come on account of sin. The Bible is the book where the total will of God can be accessed, maybe we should treat it as the Psalmist did.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

To Create Anything, You Need this!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
– John 1:1-3

Archaeological researches have shown that the earth has been in existence for billions of years, although it was formless and empty, just as the Bible says it was “in the beginning.” It has also been revealed that that life started appearing on the earth only some million years ago, when God started to populate it with living things. What transpired between the interlude of earth’s creation and its population with living beings are still subject of debate. But, if you consider the vastness of the universe and everything in it; how big, how deep, how high and how wide, you will agree that God must be quite awesome to have created all these.

Yet, the above passage tells us God does not create anything without first saying it. Genesis 1 vividly captures the account of creation, one recurrent clause that runs through that chapter is, “And God said…” thus corroborating the passage above that ALL THINGS are made through the word, and NOTHING was made without the word.

That means the Word has the power to create. Things, environments, circumstances, conditions and everything you can imagine are first created through the spoken word before they come to be.

Are there things lacking in your life that you want to be? What are the desirable but non-existent conditions in your marriage, business, career, ministry, society or other affairs? The first way to go about having them is to speak them forth. You should then back your confession with appropriate actions. Never forget that God created all things by first speaking them; there is no one smarter than Him around. So, if you want it, you have to speak it too.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

How to Maintain a Blameless Record

How can a young person live a pure life? By obeying your word  

– Psalm 119:9 (NCV)

It is generally accepted that a good reputation is better than possessions. Although, some may not agree with this notion, the fact that God Himself thinks so underscores the importance of having a good name (Proverbs 22:1). In this jet age, it is even more expedient to maintain a good reputation, because information can be accessed on anyone at the click of the mouse; thus, making the name to precede the person.

Imagine how you would feel to be called for an interview in your dreamed organisation, or to come sign a business deal you’ve long pursued, only to be denied at the last minute or even have your offer later withdrawn after your benefactor read the content of an email you sent sometime ago or your comment on the social media. It can be very distressing. But that is one of the dynamics of the age we live in. Your name precedes you most of the times.

A good reputation is good, but it does not just come to anyone. Being born of reputable parents or coming from a family with a good name does not automatically confers good reputation on anyone either. It takes series of personal discipline, wise choices and decisions to earn a good name. It doesn’t jump on anyone. If it does, there is likelihood it will soon jump off in no time when the real person behind the name is revealed.

The passage above tells us how to maintain a blameless personal record. The Psalmist asks a seemingly rhetorical question about how one can live a pure life, and then proffers an answer almost immediately, saying, the only way one can do this is to obey the word of God. That is the tip to having a name that you will be proud to answer both on earth and in heaven.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

To Keep God’s Word, You Need to Do this First

I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep Your word.
– Psalm 119:101

We’ve seen that there are multiple rewards for keeping the word of God both for now and the hereafter. Just like any parent, God is most pleased with the people who abide by His rules. They are His favourite and they have His ear first compared to those who use Him – who beseech Him when they need His help and dash off to live as they wish once their prayers are answered.

It takes personal effort on the part of each individual to keep the word of God. The precursor for keeping God’s word, as seen in the passage above, is first to restrain from doing evil. That means to have the moral fibre needed to keep the word of God, you must adhere to the age long tenet of

“see no evil, say no evil, hear no evil and do no evil.”

The Psalmist says he restrained himself from evil in every way, as this is the best way he could muster the strength to keep God’s word.

In most things in life, God’s factor is always constant. For instance, He blesses all living souls with 24 hours a day; He makes the same rain and sunshine fall on the good and the bad. But individual factors are variable and not fixed, that is why two or more different persons aspiring the same objective, using the same method, will not always get the same result, because each of them wouldn’t have done what they did the same way or with the same intensity.

To enjoy the full benefits of God, you must demonstrate obedience to His precepts. And to keep His precepts, you must first sanctify yourself – that is keeping away from all forms of evil in every conceivable way.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

It Should Not Get to This

A man in Scotland calls his son in London the day before Christmas Eve and says, “I hate to ruin your day but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; 45 years of misery is enough.”

“Dad, what are you talking about?” the son screams.

“We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,” the father says. “We’re sick of each other and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Leeds and tell her.”

Frantically, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. “Like h..l they’re getting divorced!” she shouts, “I’ll take care of this!”

She calls Scotland immediately, and screams at her father, “You are NOT getting divorced! Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?!” She hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone at the other end and turns to his wife. “Sorted! They’re both coming for Christmas and they’re paying their own way.”

While this anecdote may sound amusing, it also calls for sober reflection particularly in term of how we relate to our parents. Imagine how many times they must have patiently attended to our calls even for the most trivial of things. They should not be denied our attention now that we are on our own and can take care of ourselves.

Meditation: He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. – Matthew 15:3-6

You will succeed in Jesus Name!