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Showing posts with label faith in God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith in God. Show all posts

04 July, 2014

When You Are Hemmed In On Every Sides By Life Circumstances!



You know, my life seems to be an endless invitation for hardships to come and surround me. For some reasons I am constantly facing hopeless circumstances. Often I feel like I am hemmed in by God on all sides.  I guarantee you that I do not go out of my ways to get in trouble with God. If I want to be honest with all of you, I would have to confess that sometimes I ask myself if Christianity is all in my imagination because my heart, common sense, and wisdom cannot comprehend how is it, a God that is called a “God of love” would allow so much to come into one’s life and for so long. So, the only logical conclusion is “the whole Christianity thing is a hoax”

But, I thank my God that those moments when my strength fails to carry me through, I can find refuge and comfort in knowing:

1)                 He will carry me through
2)                 My common sense and finite understanding will never take me to the heights He has in mind for me.
3)                 Christianity is truly a sacrificial life to the highest degree.
4)                Because I am not privy to God’s higher purpose, my part in all this is to endure my lot with my mouth shut and my heart opened wide to take it in, according to His will.
5)                 Christ never misled His true followers and never promised a bed of roses down here on earth.
6)                 For all I know, my endurance of it all could be something between God and Satan, like in Job’s situation. So, not trusting Him all the way, no matter how painful and lengthy of a process I am in, could be causing God to lose face vis a vis Satan.
7)                 Through watching my painful life unfolding, I can see God’s hand on me, taking me back to the God that I know, the invisible God that I have seen with my heart and soul. He does that to reassure my soul and alleviate the pain. So, today, the Spirit told me “have you noticed how life got more difficult for Jesus?  Think about His pain to leave heaven behind! The pain of being dependent on earthly parents to care for Him as in infant! The humiliation of being obedient as a child and earthly parents! Think about what it must have been like for Him living over thirty years in obscurity amongst his brothers and sisters in His households!”

Then, the Spirit continued by saying “think about how bad and painful things got for Him when He reached the culminating point of His ministry, did things get easier? No, because every day was a test, a trial, opportunity for more shame, more persecution, less acceptance of Him and who He was in me? ‘WHY SHOULD YOUR LIFE BE DIFFERENT?’”

I also learned something else. Often times when we are going through hardships and life is tossing us like a ping pong ball, it is hard to put our hands on who to grab onto through the Bible’s heroes. If you are like me, you try to find whether Paul life would do better or Abraham, or David, or Joseph etc. But, the Spirit said to me the closer you get to me and the deeper this life in me, the more you need to let go of your role models and grab onto Christ.

Perhaps you are not like me and this is my own weakness that God has to deal with. But I knew He had put His fingers on one of my weaknesses that needed to change. This weakness of mine is that I am constantly seeking to model myself after one of those heroes of the Bible like Abraham, David, the Apostles etc. I am always trying to find out how one of them would handle the situation that I am in, so that I can walk with God. Understand that I aim to please Him. But, secretly in my heart, I am hoping that He would apply their timeline to my hardship so that I could see an end to it. I also try to convince myself why my timeline should be much less, because I am not in their league. Cultivating this kind of frame of mind causes me to always expect to be free as soon as possible, because I put in my time.

God made it clear to me that it was not up to me to hang onto those heroes and expect the outcome to turn good for me, like He did for them. i.e, everything was restored to Job, David received his crown, Joseph got his days in the sun, etc. He basically told me that it was not my business how and when He decide this awful life I have been living most of my Christian life with Him.

He taught me, as you and I grow spiritually, we reach a time where it is not enough to model after Paul or Joseph, or Abraham. The only source of hope, faith, trust and the only one who can write the ending of our circumstances, is Him and that should be sufficient for me. “LOOK ONTO ME”

This lesson happened early this morning as I woke up kind of nostalgic and with such a mood to meditate on Him before I do anything else. So, I started reading my devotion books and I was surprised to see Oswald Chamber’s devotion. I could not help smiling because I realized once again His sense of humor and His way of making provision for the hour, will always get me.

The lesson I learned today, even though my situation seems desperate and painful, and even though I need God to come to my rescue today, right now and even though He remains silent. I cannot fret.

I FEEL LIKE I AM SITTING ON THE TRAIN TRACKS, THE TRAIN IS ONLY A FEW STEPS AWAY FROM ME, AT FULL SPEED,YET GOD IS TELLING ME DON’T MOVE, TRUST ME, & DO NOT FRET!




13 October, 2013

Faith - Part 10/10



Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Faith is not as easy as we think it is. It is so easy for us to criticize the Israelites for not trusting God when they could not find water, just three days after they have had such great experiences with God. The only way we can understand why it was so hard for them to do something that appear so simple is to walk a mile in their shoes. Faith is not that easy when your life depends on it.

When I was led to a place where I truly had to trust God and believe with all my life that it was the right thing for me to lose everything, become penniless, homeless and jobless the first thing I said to Him was “ you mean I have to believe for real?”  I was not trying to be funny or clever. Those words came out of my mouth simply because I came face to face with my idea of faith and God’s idea. My idea of faith consisted of words, experiences, activities, emotions and so on and it was all beautiful as far as I was concerned and also for people observing me. There was no effort, no building up on faith, no trying to do anything that was peculiar, no God to impress, no letting go of my common sense and believe anything mystical about this Christian life.

When I uttered the words “you want me to believe for real?” All of the sudden I realized He was asking me to trust someone that no one has ever seen. He was asking me to believe those words that I have been reading in the Bible which were inspired by an invisible God. He was asking me to believe all those things I have been reading about Salvation and Christ truly died and most of all I had to believe that He truly ascended into heaven.  Yes, by the time He asked me to believe and bet my life on Him, I was experiencing Him and He was so real to me, but that’s not faith either. I found myself asking Him “but, how do I know you are not a figment of my imagination?” The reason we have this “fight and flight” response when God is testing our faith, it is because everything about faith defy logic and when common sense is out of the windows we have nothing else to go on.

When we look at Hebrews 11:6 most of us go through it and do not even think twice about what we are repeating. It was a frightening thing for me to master just this tiny part of the verse which is: “For he that comes to God must believe that he is.”   Do you realize even the demons are ahead of us? They believe so much that they shudder in the presence of Christ. You might think that this is beside the point that I am trying to make in this post. But it is not. The reason is, throughout my walk with God I never lose sight of the fact that even demons shudder in Christ’s presence and they live with great reverence toward God. So, I need to know that my walk goes further than that and the only way it is going to differentiate me from the demons is what I decide to do with my trust in Him and how well I am going to accept His leadership. In that sense, His leadership has to become a reality in my life and yours. I will never be content with an assumption that I am probably being led by Him.

I did not trust God right away and I spent days weighing things and trying to work it all out in my heart. One day, the Holy Spirit knew I was struggling with the idea of banking real life and real consequences with an invisible God that might not be real.” The compassion of the Holy Spirit was out of this world, with so much understanding and tenderness, He said “Jess” look into your heart, don’t try to understand with your mind but think about the changes that you know happened within you. Are these real changes? I had to say yes because few minutes at the feet of God is worth months of learning and changes on the inside. I knew I had become a different person because I had a spiritual relationship with Him. This life was mine and no one could take it away from my heart and I knew for a fact, this inward change and spiritual relationship were not my imagination. So, the Holy Spirit said then hold onto to what you know is true in this relationship and take the next step of faith with Him, this part of you that you cherish so much has been given to you by this invisible God you are doubting right now.  Only then, I knew I could trust Him for the next step.

Notice something, when I was not able to trust Him I did not get busy trying my earnest to bury what was going on in my life, through friends, social media, time spent on the internet or church activities.  I stayed close to Him and continued my Bible and prayer time along with mediation with a heart ready and willing to receive more instructions.  Another thing I found out, God is happy when we trust Him, but He is glorified when we trust right away within thinking twice about what He asks of us. So, He keeps taking us through more testing and as time goes by, we too we can see how fast we react in trusting His leading.  But, even when God is taking us through further testing, I find that sometimes we are totally oblivious to what He is doing until we take our focus off of us and look onto Jesus.

Throughout the years God has never let go and has always been by my side. It turns out, I never had to be on the streets because God had chosen a place for me to go and He prepared this person to receive me. But when you are dealing with a mean drunk who is always looking for the next fight, it is not easy.  While God prepared the heart of this person to give me a place to live, He did not take away his need to blackmail me day in day out. Everyday I lived with a constant reminder that I can be out on the streets.  As anxieties set in, it took me a few weeks to understand that I had no right to panic.

One day I received the usual threats and I was shown the doors, all of the sudden I realized that I have been living with anxieties in my heart instead of trusting God. I remember stopping what I was doing and instead of getting upset or taking the doors like I was told, one verse came to mind and I thought about the lilies of the valleys. Then I told myself, if God takes care of them, I am so much more than a lily to Him. I realized I had an extraordinary opportunity to once again trust His word and have faith in Him. I can smile about it now when I see how much God used this man’s meanness to keep testing my faith in Him until my faith was as strong as an oak tree.

God used this person's character to keep me deeper in my surrendering. There, I found not only there are three levels of surrendering to God but after a while you learn to live a life totally abandoned to Him. (& yes I found out there was a major spiritual difference between living the surrendered life and a life of complete abandonment to His will.)  I personally learned that the life of total abandonment resemble to the life of a branch attached to the tree of life and sucking everything needed to survive and flourish. No, you are not perfect, and you can step out of the abandoned life once in a while but the beauty of living a life totally abandoned to Him, is that you know when you step out of Him, because you are like a fish out of water.

I also learned, the faith that God is looking for has nothing to do with the opportunities we create for ourselves while forging our own footprints. Because, true faith is always about not knowing and not seeing, yet you chose to believe and walk the path however hard and in spite of the consequences. Our faith is directly related to our obedience to God‘s word.  Throughout the Bible faith is never about how well we believed in the past, but how well we pass today’s test of faith, Christianity is a continuous spiritual fight to keep your faith renewed in Him daily.

Brothers and sisters there is nothing glorious about my life, it is actually full of shame and hardships. I poured my heart out to you and shared my shame because if God could use my story to bring your forward and stop a man-made Christian walk, if you can end up in His arms of love, then glory to Him! You and I will not only meet in heaven but we will be right there serving as royalty, by His side.

 In His Agape Love & Service

MJ

30 September, 2013

Faith – Part 7

Hebrews 13:7-9 “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so."

I read this book where this man wrote how he is sick and tired of hearing people talking about how they experience God and he finds it sometimes discouraging because it makes you wonder “what about me God?” Then he went on explaining to his readers not to worry about these people because God’s grace is what makes Him decide who to reveal Himself to and in the end this author seems to be saying that God basically does some “mini ma nimo” I paraphrased there, but that’s the gist of it. I have to say through reading his books I know he is a man of God and a child of God because he has true faith in God. This man has status coming out of his ears and you can see that from how he gave a glimpse into his life, the kind of job he held and his financial success etc. You can also see it in the circle of friends he included in the book as they provided him with testimonies which he included pages of them in the back of his book.  The funny thing is, as I was reading those pages of testimonies about him I still do not understand why he needed to include so many of them and it felt like a display of stars on the red carpet. One of his friend’s testimony included in the book was Billy Graham who talked about how this author and friend is a man of faith. The point that I am trying to make is that, according to the world standards, this man has it all.

I used to struggle with the fact that I experience God so much. In fact at the beginning, even though I did not know God well, I begged Him to stop revealing Himself to me and I even prayed fervently that He would take this gift of Himself away from me and reveal Himself instead, to the senior pastor of the Church that I used to attend. God knew I was not making it up, I felt wholeheartedly that if God was to reveal Himself to my pastor in the same way that He reveals Himself to me, there would be a revival in the Church, because people loves this pastor and he is so eloquent and when he takes the podium he is truly electrifying. I remember having a conversation with his father in law about that and the work electrifying was exactly what he used to describe proudly his son in law. I had to concur with him.

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When I was praying God to transfer the give of Himself to my pastor, I remember I used to find so much joy , knowing that people would come to God with all their heart and God would be pleased. My prayer was totally selfless. Keep in mind that my pastor was one of those people who used to see me as a big idiot because I was not wearing masks in the Church like everyone else. But through my prayer, you can tell I was not spiritually mature enough, so God did not reveal to me right away the main reason why He could not do the same thing with my pastor.

Faith is a gift from God. I totally believe that. I am also aware that there is a controversy that exists for centuries now, around this verse found in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” There is a division between scholars, pastors and well known authors about these verses because a group of them believe that faith is not a gift of God and some believe yes it is a gift. Each one of these intellectual people usually goes on and on about how believing the wrong thing about faith would affect our walk. First of all, as far as I am concerned, I find these two verses the simplest things that God ever said to us, because I do not have the natural strength, abilities, skills and intelligence to think anything else, hence why I would rather do as God said which is having a childlike attitude and ask my daddy directly. I know, since His word tells me to believe with a childlike attitude, I can’t be wrong, if I ask Him, He will tell me. This is where it is good to say and truly believe in our heart that “GOD CANNOT LIE” – In this context, I am not trying to cheat my way through salvation nor that am I trying to hoard everything He has for me while giving nothing back.

In fact when I went to Him with a childlike attitude and asked Him how do I get through this mess out there where everyone seems to hold on to a partial truth? This prayer was prayed only a few months after I surrendered all to Him. He then told me, the first thing you have to do is to learn to get to a place where the Bible ceases to be a history book to your heart.  I understood that I needed to relate to those people that I was reading about in the Bible. I needed God to come alive like He used to be with the Israelites. I was surprise to see that even though I did not think  God was a dead God, but my belief and my life reflected that I was serving a dead God who no longer talk to us. I was shocked to see that God is as active in our lives and He is still talking to those who want to hear Him.  Another thing I needed to do was to start living out this life as if Christ truly ascended to Heaven.

When we set our mind to believe in this fashion, all of the sudden we find that we are hearing with our heart and what we are hearing whether is through our pastors from the podium or we are just reading, we realize what we are doing, is using the little faith we have to build on it. At first, it is so foreign to you because you actually venturing out on what He says. All your senses will be on alert mode screaming you are crazy. But, you have to mentally, spiritually and physically take the step to align with His authority and literally act in accordance to His spoken word. God finds much joy when He doesn’t have to force us to the point of dragging us to hear His word with our heart, trust what we hear in faith take the steps to put into practice what we hear. I tell you the truth, the moment we take the steps to trust and obey He comes along and carry us through it so we can do according to His desires.

Years ago, I opened up a bank account where the bank would give clients $25.00 to open a bank account with them. But in those days, I was not mature enough to acquire about fees for the administration of the account, the bank put my $25.00 and I went my way, never bothered about anything not even putting any money in there. One day I received a letter telling me to settle my bank charges because the account was accumulating so much. So, not only I lost the original $25.oo now I owed money.  As I understood faith being a gift from God, He taught me that the faith that I received in order to start this walk with Him is like a bank account where He made a deposit on my behalf so that I can start this walk with Him. But, it is my responsibility to administrate what I already received from Him in order that He can keep giving me more. Then He said, don’t worry about the responsibility to administrate the bank account because I am going to show you that too.

Over time, I learned that my faith will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS be tested by God. And that goes for all of us Christians. Some of us will have faith in Him worth $2.00 and some will have $2000 or 2 million worth of faith in Him, and so on. Even the one with $2.00 worth of faith will be saved. There are some who never even bother to use the first deposit and it does not matter how God try and try to get them to go forward inwardly, they just do not want Him in this way, like the Israelites in the wilderness.  But God has shown us over and over again, when we decide to live outside of His goal of redemption for us, we get comfortable with our sins under the misguided idea that because He loves us we will be okay, that is our own presumption. Living outside His goal for redemption has direct consequences that we have to deal with. It is not like God brings things down on us or He is not true to His word, but rather the consequences of our sins find us.

But, the more faith you have, the more you have to learn to be a child in His hands. For almost a decade now, I keep seeing myself like a child between 6 -8 years old whenever God is dealing with me in the matter of faith.  I always thought He was the one who portrays me like this. But this year in 2013 He finally answered me. I asked again why is it that I am growing spiritually with you, yet you always look at me as if I am a child between 6-8 years old, I said I find it weird that you see me this way and I need to understand why? I said why is it I am not aging with you?  He finally told me, I do not choose to make you look like this my child, you never aged because you have learned to believe in me as if you were a child expecting me to care for you. Without Him saying it, I could tell He was pleased with me not wanting to age.

Only then I remember the best years of my life when I was around that age, I did not know better, I always expected my mom and dad to look after me. I never wanted to escape them, escape life, etc.  By the time I turned 10 years old I had a different awareness of life and I learned to view my parents differently. So, when I read the Bible and I wanted to please God with a childlike attitude that He demands of us, in my heart and soul, I set out to model this innocent, curious, trusting and eager to learn child when it comes to God’s word and my relationship with Him.

Having experienced God in the way I do, I learned how much delight it brings His heart when we exercise faith in Him. In fact, early on when I was getting to know Him, I felt like a child playing with my daddy. I remember saying wow! God is a sucker when it comes to faith. I know He knows that I used the word sucker with no intend of malice or disrespect in my heart because it was the only way I could explain all that I was living with Him. Yes, it was the time when I was in the worst shape of my life and I was losing everything I ever owned. During that time, I understood how awesome Adam and Eve had it. To have God come down just because He is seeking your company is phenomenal.  

At one point I had doubt that God does not play favouritism, so I went with Him to understand why is it if He does not play favourite, yet, some can see you and be with you so much and some don’t? Why is it you keep saying in the Bible that you love those who love you on several occasions, and one that I can think of right now is Proverbs 8:17? What’s up with 2 Chronicles 16:9? Strangely, God does not see it as favouritism, but simply because He starts the reward process even down here. That’s when He showed me, some Christians that I see might look so big and mighty down here, when we are all in heaven it will be surprising to see someone like me will be bigger in heaven than someone who is considered a pillar of your Church and actually sees you as being insignificant.  My point here is that Salvation is actually receiving a fortune from God. To unlock the gate of the treasure house, we have the key which is our faith in Him. God set it that way in His plan of Salvation.

It does not matter the amount of fasting, the amount of prayer and activities we do on his behalf. While they are all good things, at the end of the day, the main ingredient that is truly pleasing to God is our faith in Him. When we have faith in Him, we bless Him. Just like unbelief is like a cancer and affects every choice we make, faith affects each choice we make. The more you have faith, the more God is no longer a guest in your heart,  it is His Dwelling and He enjoys being there. Faith is the catalyst that brings this endless intimacy in your life with Him, no matter how hard this life is, you feel like you are living an endless love affair with Him.  

Yes I poke the bear, I am always asking for more faith and because I know that God is going to take me at my word I already know the test will be harsh so when I pray for more faith I can’t pray for it without crying because of the anticipated pain.  But, you know why I keep praying for more faith in Him? Because I know we can have endless faith in Him and there will always be room to expand we will never be filled to capacity. Secondly, I know in my heart because of who He is, that it is my ongoing faith in Him that will keep fuelling this love affair that I am having with Him. Thirdly, I do not want to ever put God in a position where He feels betrayed by my faith in Him where He would evoke our love as a thing of the past. It is so easy to backslide, I am not interested in finding out how far I can backslide away from him. When you make faith your first goal, it does not matter whether you understand things well enough because as you look around you, the house is being built for you, in you and all around you, while you never lift a finger.

I can see from the unusual amount of hits that I have, a lot of people are reading the faith posts. So, I apologize for yesterday, between soar throat, endless coughing to the point where I lost my voice all day, I could not sit for long, hence why I did not put the post out.

I pray that all of you would go forward in knowing Him through the depth of your soul.

Imagine having someone who loves you so much that He would rather die than living without you. That’s what He did for us. Doesn’t He deserve the gratitude of your heart? Give Him the honour that is due to Him, give Him yourself.
I truly love you guys and sometimes it makes me smile because I ask God how can one go on, loving people that you have never met, yet in your heart you can only see them like a close and precious family member? May the God of peace sanctify you through and through.
Take care