“Whatever we do, it is because the love of Christ controls us” II Corinthians 5:14
In ministry, we are faced constantly by challenges and choices. It is easy to do the right things for the wrong motives if we do not constantly check our motivation. Many people are involved in God’s work because of so many things; a longing for the praise of men, self glory and ego, amassing wealth, societal recognition, freedom from a guilty conscience etc. Most believers are not concerned about their motives because they have taken sides with the world which says ‘the end justifies the means’.
With respect to God, whatsoever we do, His desire is that we do it for the right reason – because of His love.
“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love”. I Corinthians 13:3 (MSG)
In our service to humanity and devotion to God, he expects us to do so because of his love. So let’s check our hearts and let’s do things because His love propels us to do so.
-busola oshinubi
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. – Ecclesiastes 4:12b
As I was trying to round up on the last post on ‘Careful what you believe’, I noticed this part of our text, a cord of three strands. I meditated on what God was trying to tell me here. It’s wonderful what I re-discovered. ‘Wonderful’ because I never saw things this way before and ‘rediscovered’ because God had once told me this same thing before I got married.
This word is necessary for every one in a marriage or courtship. Being from the kind of background I came from, I worried about the success of my marriage, I especially prayed that my husband would never cheat on me. One day God in the cool of the day like of old, told me that my husband’s faithfulness to me was tied to his (that is my husband’s) faithfulness to Him (God). That became my peace, but you know what, I didn’t hold on to the word like I should have. I hope someone yet to marry will do better than me. Thank God my husband has been a good one despite my attitude.
So what has this word got to do with the text, ‘A cord of three Strands’? What or who makes up these three strands? In marriage counseling, people are advised not to share what happens in their marriage with anyone. But you know what, there’s one person every detail should be shared with, this is the third person who will make your marriage unbreakable and really blissful.
He alone has the best advice for every situation that may come up. He has the right words you need to say to seem like the best partner you are not anyway. Individually you can go share secrets with Him and as a couple you can go to him. He is always there.
Every time you spend time together or individually with him, strength, hope, peace is renewed, fears are also taken care of. This person is no one but God himself. As a couple and individually you need to seek God. You need to have both individual and corporate altars. Share the word of God, pray to God and serve God together. This is very essential, remember the scripture says “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added on to you“. Note that these things there referred to clothing, shelter … which represent the things we worry about. I translate this scripture to mean that as we seek God’s Kingdom together we make God the third Person and all our worries are taken care of.
Seek Him more. To the man, I say take it upon you to build the altar and to the woman, I say be a worthy helper. Any married person will agree that it really takes commitment on the part of husband and wife to establish an altar after marriage. You will both be very busy and tired considering the world we live in today; at this point we need to choose to either live by our convictions or convenience.
God help us all as we work to attain this.
Love you
omolola ezeifeoma.
Let’s talk about you and your salvation? What do I mean by salvation? Well, primarily it speaks of how you got saved, rescued from the slavery you were held in. A vital question along these lines is ‘Who is Jesus to you’?
Too often we fail to realise that Jesus is not just an open door leading to all of God’s riches. He is actually the blessing of God personified. No wonder we are called to look only to Jesus and no other. All starts and ends in him.
Again we fail to realise that Jesus didn’t come to give us a second chance at life again. What is the meaning of this you say? Have you ever watched a repeat game of football? The players are very much the same, with the same obstacles as before. Their weaknesses have not changed either. They try so hard perhaps the victory may just come around this time. Only difference is they have another opportunity to right the wrongs they made.
But thank God for His grace, God delivered us once and for all time. He has changed our destiny eternally. Our history has been completely re-written. No wonder our existence now is described in a form of newness which has not existed before. The totality of our being now bears the stamp of God. Our strengths are gone; the weaknesses are gone too. There is a new man now altogether whose strength and weakness can only be defined in God.
Permit me to re-emphasize the first point. Jesus – the way, the truth and the life. Fullness, wholeness, completeness lies in Him. He told Philip “A look at me should suffice you. Don’t ask me to show you who God is or where he is”. John 14:9 (Paraphrased). Christ fills you through and through; He is not pointing you to another. He is life itself; He is not pointing you to another. He is all and besides him there is none other. Take time to thank God again for all he has done in Christ Jesus. I tell you friends God has emptied his all in Christ. Now consider what it means when the bible says your life is now hid with Christ in God. Are you looking for another……?
– bolaji akanni
Myles Munroe once held a small seed in front of a class and asked them what they saw. Looking carefully they agreed they saw a seed. Myles told them he held in his hands a forest. Why? Because in the seed there was a tree, in that tree many fruits, in those fruits many seeds, in those seeds many trees and hence a forest.
Life operates on the seed principle. Scripture makes us understand that as long as the earth remains seedtime and harvest time will not seize (Gen 8: 33). There must be planting before harvest. Investment is planting a seed to ensure a harvest.
To have plenty you must learn to invest. You must consciously and deliberately set aside a portion of all you get. You must learn to plant seeds. Every money you have is a seed, all actions a seed, words, the most powerful of seeds. And unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it abideth alone, but if it dies it brings forth a huge harvest.’
Jesus operated on that principle. He was the seed of David. He died and what harvest his death has produced.
Your seed is in your hand. Don’t eat it. Plant it, let it die and bring forth plenty for you. I love this passage … ‘For God is the one who gives seed to the farmer AND THEN bread to eat…’ 2 Corinthians 9:10. God in his faithfulness gives us seeds with every food to ensure we have plenty to scatter and have plenty. Withhold not thy hand. Plant first AND THEN EAT.
That simply is investment …seed planting
-emmanuel aladenusi
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
I don’t know why I’m writing or talking about this, this week but I know one thing is for sure, God wants to put an end to the lies that have been going on in someone’s mind.
In Relationships, especially marriage relationship we often experience one storm or the other. Sometimes this might be little things which we make a big deal of (most times because we don’t have challenges).
Sometime ago, my husband told me this “I don’t have any major issues with you, it’s just this little ones that keep appearing here and there”.
And you know what if I can be sincere with you, this so called little things drive me to the edge at times. Is it because they are just little in his eyes and larger in mine, No! It is because I allow the devil taunt me, I listen to the voices in my head and they push me further and further away. I’m sure a man reading this will say it’s a feminine thing. No it’s not! Sometimes the reason we over react and have a fight is this. It happens to both men and women.
The devil’s strategy from the beginning of time hasn’t changed. See Gen. 3:1-5. I find this passage very interesting because it’s the first illustration in the Bible that shows us this strategy and secondly it happened in a family setting. And this had an eternal consequence which you and I bear today.
It was the first family, Dad had gone to work as usual leaving mum around at home to tend to things. Sure dad passed an instruction to mum, the master said “do not go near the tree” but then the enemy came drawing mum’s attention once more to the tree (Gen3:1-8) of course naturally she refuses because she has instructions not to go near the tree. But the devil persisted, explaining the details of the effect of action though an half truth which is equally a lie. And just as we Christians behave these days, Eve had a second thought and in her mind she said “It’s not really bad after all”. Before we knew it Eve had eaten the fruit and taken it to Adam and all creation had fallen.
The devil’s greatest weapon which he uses to drag us down is the power to convince us to see things his way. He pushes us to doubt, fear, regret our decision to go into our relationship/marriage just because of a present challenge.
I believe this is a word for now for some. Never give up, especially to the married ones, refuse the enemy’s word.
Believe what God says concerning marriage, this is the only TRUTH that matters.
God bless you.
– lola ezeifeoma
“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit, who lives in you”. Romans 8:11 (NIV)
Christianity is supernatural! I could say that a thousand times and still not have said it enough. As believers, one of the many things that mark us out from the pack is our ability to live above the blood level.
Leviticus 17:11 tells us that ‘the life of the flesh is in the blood’. But as we have seen in the previous article, for a believer, the life of his flesh is not in his blood but in his spirit as expressed in Romans 8:10.
How is this possible? When you got born again, you received eternal life into your spirit. That ‘eternal life’ is the life of God. The very essence of divinity coming to tabernacle in your spirit. It is the life by which God walks and talks, creates and heals.
Now when you received that life, it was never meant to be locked up within your spirit. It was God’s full intention that through certain means that life will flow out from your spirit to transform your mind and heal your body.
Those means are revealed to us in Romans 8:10-11 as (i) Righteousness (ii) The Holy Spirit. In the next two articles, I will be talking about how to use these means to bring the supernatural life of God in your spirit to bear upon your mortal body.
– Dr deji oyebamiji
The term canon of scripture means the complete collection of books which are regarded as of Divine authority. The word canon in Greek means a straight rod, rule or measure. As applied to the Bible it means the rules by which certain books were declared as inspired and accepted as such. It should be noted that before the books of the Bible as we have it today were compiled, many books in circulation were purportedly divine and inspired. The Fathers of faith therefore found it necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff; hence, very stringent rules were employed to ascertain the books that were divine. The books of the Bible we have today was the result of their work.
Why does the believer need a canon of scripture? Why were the various portion of the divinely inspired word of God collected and bound into a Book called “The Holy Bible”? There are four main reasons why there was a need for the canon.
- So that believers in every generation might have the complete revelation from God.
- So that believers might have God’s word in writing. If the contents of the Scriptures were still being transmitted orally, a lot of distortions would have come into it.
- There was a need for the preservation and circulation of the sacred writings.
- That the people might know which writings have the authority of God.
FORMATION OF OT CANON
The generally accepted date for the completion of the OT canon was the year 425 or 424 BC. The Septuagint (LXX), was the first translation of the OT carried out by Ptolemy Philadephus (285 -247 BC) in Egypt. By that time there were many Jews living in Egypt who could no longer read or write Hebrew having been influenced by Greek culture and adopted the Hellenistic Greek of Egypt as their language. This translation was done by a group of seventy scholars hence the name Septuagint and Roman numeral LXX.
Josephus Flavius, a famous Jewish historian of the 1st Century A.D stated in one of his treatise that the canon of his time consisted of 22 books, namely the Pentateuch, thirteen books of the prophets and four of hymns and practical precepts. Although Josephus did not give a concise list, scholars believes that the book of the prophets included Joshua, Judges, Ruth; Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Isaiah, Jeremiah- Lamentation, Ezekiel, Daniel, The Twelve Minor Prophets and possibly Job (or Canticles). The hymns and precepts would be made up of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles (or Job).
CRITERIA FOR A CANONICITY (Four Criteria were applied)
Inspiration:- Was the author an acknowledged messenger of God, commissioned by God to make known His will” 2 Pet 1:21 . Books by such people were accepted.
The Principle of internal evidence:- Deut 31: 24 -26; Judges 3:4. The books which were read in other places in the Bible were accepted since those who read such passages must have accepted them as canonical. Daniel must have read Jer. 25: 11-12 and 29: 10.
Documentation by quotation:- Books from which Jesus Christ or other apostles quoted from were accepted Mt. 22:29, John 10:35
The law of Public Official action:- This is an historical law which required that public action be taken to solemnly declare a portion of the scripture to be the word of God ; Neh. 8:5 .
Jesus Christ’s Endorsement:- Mat 23:35; Luke11:51 this statement by the Lord is believed to be an endorsement of the OT from Gen 4 to 2 Chro 24: 20-21. In fact, He endorsed the whole OT here because Chronicles was the last book in the Hebrew OT Canon.
– gabriel ajibade
Sharpening your sensitivity to God’s leading- 1
Bible Reading: Hebrews 5:7-14
I grew up having a phobia for water. So I never attempted to swim as a child. But one day during my teenage years, I went to a swimming pool and saw something that destroyed my phobia. A young boy was afloat on water. I could not see any of his body parts moving and yet he wasn’t sinking. It appeared to me as though he was sleeping on water. I was so captivated and motivated to the point that I said to myself – “one day I must also be able to stay afloat on water without any aid”.
The next day I was in the pool. I really wanted to learn. I asked my friends to teach me how to float. They laughed sarcastically and told me it doesn’t work that way. I needed to start from the basics. First, I learnt how to stay in water for some minutes, later I was taught how to paddle my legs, then I started learning most of the swimming strokes. The day I ‘slept’ on water, no body taught me.
My story should remind you of the behavior of most believers. They get saved and never cultivate the habit of recognizing the will of God. But when it is time to get married, choose a career or vocation, or venture into something they think will have a great impact on their lives, they start seeking the will of God. Their first attempt in the pool of knowing God’s will is to ‘sleep on water’, without learning the basics. No wonder they experience so much pain that some even begin to doubt the existence of God.
Hebrews 5:14 (GNB) is so sweet; it says “Solid food … is for adults, who through practice are able to distinguish between good and evil”. I want you to pay attention to the fact that it is through practice that we are able to know the exact will of God. How do I practice? First, you have to learn to stay long in the ‘waters of the word’. God has a general will that applies to all believers; study the Bible to know it. This will form the bedrock for knowing His specific will that concerns to you alone.
To be continued …
– tope aladenusi
| The potential to discern the future Bible Reading: John 14
One day Jesus Christ looked into the eyes of Peter and said “this night, you will deny me thrice before the cock crows”. Shortly after saying this, Peter denied Jesus three times. This and many reasons have made me to believe that “nobody knows tomorrow” is not a Christian vocabulary. The language and lifestyle of Jesus were a demonstration of the knowledge of the immediate and far future. Interestingly, Jesus promised all believers the ability to exhibit similar tendencies.
He said in John 16:13 (BBE) “However, when he, the Spirit of true knowledge, has come, he will be your guide into all true knowledge: for his words will not come from himself, but whatever has come to his hearing, that he will say: and he will make clear to you the things to come.
Yes! The Holy Spirit wants to make tomorrow clear to you. Most people have read this verse and concluded that the Holy Spirit will make them understand the Bible. This is true. But there is more to it. Jesus understood the scriptures and also the things that pertain to his daily living. However, many believers are giants in dissecting scriptures, but toys in handling life challenges. They have narrowed the ministry of the Holy Spirit to explaining scriptures alone.
Every Christian has the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9) and we all have the potential to know the things to come and the will of God for our lives. I’m in love with Romans 8:14 which reads “And all those who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God”.
Jesus once told Nathanael that “while you were under the fig tree, I saw you”. He told his disciples that “one of you will betray me”. He once instructed them to “Go into the village ahead of you. You will find a donkey tied there and a colt with it”. What about when he said “our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up” even when he had not seen Lazarus. He also guided Simon on where to invest his time and energy when he told him, “take the boat into deep water, and lower your nets to catch some fish” … and Simon caught fishes like never before.
All these are not just written in the Bible so we would say “Oh! What a wonderful Jesus”. They are patterned to inspire us to live a wonderful life. You have the ability to know … the exact place to invest … the price of that share will rise by $5 in 5 days … there will be a riot in that city… this is the bone of my bone … the people of City XYZ are crying for salvation. Yes! The Holy Spirit wants to make clear to you the things to come. – tope aladenusi
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Breath taking
Mind boggling
How could you define
God’s way to refine
He didn’t remould
Rather he left the old
Making all anew
Without a wrinkle
What a wonder to realise
He paid so much a price
Making corruptible
stand infallible
Holy I now am
Sanctified I stand
Righteous I lie
For his death bought me life
Listen,
Not a restart for my life
But His life, now my life
Behold such a love
The father so poured on us
That we should be called
The begotten of God
Truly what a wonder
I could never have pondered
Never could have imagined
that He would break down the boundary
that in His love I stand forever,
For now in his love I stand forever
bolaji akanni