Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Manifold Wisdom of God

The act of trying to duplicate another man’s results in your life is always a futile project. It never produces the right results of peace, fulfilment, joy, or intimate communion with God. Rather, it brings about pseudo-interactions with God. This is because it is not possible to have revelations from God out of the quest to fulfil borrowed desires.

The acquisition of knowledge from books and other sources leads to illumination and not revelation from God. Revelation always comes as God responds to the genuine desires of our heart. It always comes when we face challenges in our quest to realise our divinely-inspired aspirations.

Attempts to act solely on illumination often leads to misdirected zeal and eventually to frustration. However, reliance on revelation breaks out in practical strategies on the immediate steps to take in order to fulfil the hearts’ desires. Revelation to Naaman meant washing in the Jordan seven times. To the widow at Zarephath, it meant giving out her last meal to a prophet.

Revelation from God always carries the creative characteristic of God. God’s many-sided creative views are always reflected in the revelations received from Him. This is reflected in the startling differences between the instructions given to both Moses and Joshua when they both faced the same set of circumstances at different times. Exo 14:1516 says, ‘And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea to Joshua these were the instructions, ‘Now therefore take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above and they shall stand upon an heap. And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people And as they that bare the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest,) That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho (Josh 3:12-16).

Thus, when they were faced with the same situation, Moses and Joshua received different revelations. Moses was instructed to stretch out his rod over the Red Sea and it parted. Joshua, on the other hand, was instructed to tell the elders of each tribe to carry the Ark of the Covenant ahead of other Israelites into the River Jordan. In God’s manifold wisdom and two unrelated events, God achieved the same result of creating a pathway in the midst of water using two different methods. This reflects the beauty of God’s creativity. The depth of God’s wisdom is so boundless that there is always a personal touch in His revelation to every man. You must therefore be patient and meditate on the knowledge that you possess until revelation is imparted.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

As a man thinketh

‘For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. (Prov 23:7). Everyman is the summation of his thoughts i.e. if his thoughts are evil, he speaks forth such thoughts. It doesn’t just end there though the circumstances of his life conform to such uttered thoughts (i.e. the words that he has been saying). In the same vein, if his thoughts are good and righteous, his life will be filled with desirable occurrences. The key to cultivating good thoughts is to declare the immutable Word of God whenever unwanted thoughts of fear, anger and jealousy creep in. Just as the only way to fight darkness is with light, the only way to overcome evil is with good. Affirm the good about yourself and the evil will eventually vanish.

Heb 4:15 says that Christ is easily touched by the feelings of our infirmities however, this is not an excuse for inconsistent confessions. The Bible says you should hold fast the confession of your lips when you are going through trying times. The Scriptures also say in Heb 4:16, ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. If pressure is laid on you during this process, go into the place of prayer. Let the Holy Spirit work with the words that you have spoken, obtain a fresh supply of strength. If you start feeling depressed about negative words spoken to you, hold on to your confessions (speak them out of your mouth at that particular point in time) until the feeling lifts. Get into prayer right after that releasing anyone you have anything against. Pray until you get a release in your spirit and that level of attack will never disturb you again for the rest of your life. It is gone for good. Once you get that grace, you have advanced beyond that level. This is how we grow and develop moving closer to our fixed goal as we successfully pass through life’s different stages.

Find out what you desire in your heart and never separate your words from it. Do not let anything ever separate you from the love of Christ (Rom 8:35). Do not let trials and temptations ever affect the words that you are speaking. Understand that everybody is going through the same thing therefore, go through your own process joyfully. Death only comes to make the life of Christ manifest in your flesh. When men say there is a casting down, faith filled believers say there is a lifting up (Job 22:29).

The same event which causes the natural man to fail, contributes to the elevation of the righteous… if handled right. There are things that people say and do which awaken your Personal Recognition System to those things you might have been hitherto unaware of. You might have even felt bad when they first mentioned them. However, these types of words usually trigger unexpected treasure in you. If you stir up those things, you will discover that it was the Lord nudging you in that direction. This is because without such external pressures, you will probably stay put in your comfort zone. Therefore, be grateful to God when you enter such seasons. Do not get angry. Discover the new things God is trying to do in your life. Release those things and you will see the manifestation of God’s presence in your life.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

An Opportune Time

HAPPY NEW MONTH TO YOU ALL, ENJOY THE MESSAGE AND ACT ON IT GOD WILL BLESS HIS WORD IN OUR HEART IN JESUS NAME AMEN.

The term ‘opportune time’ can be defined as the appropriate time for a non-recurring event in your life. Hab. 2:3 says, ‘For the vision within your heart is yet for an appointed’ time (an opportune time). This means that the vision is for a time when opportunity will be created for it to be made manifest and it hastens to its fulfilment. It will neither deceive nor disappoint you. Though it tarries, wait earnestly on it. This scripture emphasises the need for every individual to wait and refrain from acting until the opportunity for the fulfilment of their vision is presented to them. This means that there is a time in your life where you should not look for the lime light. During this period, you should simply embrace the cloak of invisibility while preparing for the manifestation of the things that no human eye or ear has ever seen or heard. At such times, visibility could be a curse especially to young dreams and visions. This is because such dreams do not yet possess enough spiritual stamina to withstand exposure to diverse influences. It is a key principle in life that if you do not learn how to be invisible, you should not desire visibility.

You have to learn to wait. You need to imbibe the virtue of patience. The birth of destiny requires that you possess enough strength of character to keep on processing your vision even while your peers appear to be moving ahead. It requires the appreciation of your unique destiny and its related timing. Jesus demonstrated this in His early years He did not seek premature attention before His time for manifestation arrived. When John the Baptist was enjoying a huge following, He was silent. Even when John was reluctant to baptise Him, Jesus still encouraged him not to sabotage God’s process. He was one person who understood and embraced His process. He spent 30 years in oblivion developing all His latent qualities in anticipation of the period of visibility. This period was crucial in His development because if anything was left undone in this preparatory stage, He would not attain the fullness of His purpose in those areas.

This spiritual concept is so specific that even people with evil intentions cannot manifest their desires until the opportune time is presented. This indicates that timing is everything when it comes to the manifestation of the hearts’ desires. The Scriptures say “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven (Eccl 3:1).