Years ago, I had trouble differentiating the times when I was relying solely on my ability to produce results from times when I was trusting God. I knew that trusting God consistently would always translate to inevitable success, but I felt that the line demarcating my trust in God from trust in myself was too thin. So thin that it would go unnoticed whenever I deviated.
I remember chatting with a lady in my university days; she would tell me how she always prayed and expected her prospective husband to propose to her before she was 25 years old. But from our conversations, it was obvious that the reason she was confident that this expectation would be fulfilled was not necessarily because she trusted God implicitly, but that she was beautiful, God-fearing and, a virgin – and of course, those were the qualities most good guys wanted (her opinion). Then I thought to myself, God gave her all those good qualities, after all “What do you have that God hasn’t given you?” So if she expected her “God-given credentials” to get her a man, did that amount to self-trust?
I hadn’t come up with an answer yet when I heard a fellow believer say – “To excel in your academics, read your books as though you don’t have a God and have never prayed, and then, pray to God as though you have never read”. Wow! I thought it made absolute sense at the time and, I immediately began an attempt to excel by this principle. But as the days went by and I grew as a Christian, I started asking myself – could you ask a fish to swim as though it were out of water? If in God I live, and move and have my being, how can I read as though I don’t have a God? From that day on, I started practicing “Spirit-directed reading” i.e. getting direction from the Holy Spirit regarding the major topics from which the examination questions would be culled, and then actually studying on that basis. I got fantastic results this way, but I knew deep down that there was more to trusting God than I had discovered.
A friend of mine shared this powerful statement regarding trusting God after reading last week’s devotional, and I think he was spot on. He said “It is not that God starts where our strengths end, it is that we start with and follow Him all through our life’s journey or end up failing woefully on our own”. It’s either ALL of Him or NONE of Him. I love this! At any time, our efficiency without God’s sufficiency is a deficiency. We have to walk with him all the way. You don’t need to veer off the road to remember that Jesus can take the wheel; let him take the wheel as you start your engine. You don’t need to be diagnosed with an incurable disease before you remember the healing power of God; learn to live in good health by His power everyday. You don’t need an embarrassing quit notice from your landlord before you remember that God has the whole world in his hands; start seeing yourself as a provider of shelter for the needy.
In a nutshell, the habit of running to God only when there is “fire on the mountain” is not biblical trust. Trusting God goes beyond and should precede our obvious daily needs. You can make living in perpetual trust in God a lifestyle by understanding and appreciating the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Before you knew what sin and success was, Christ paid the price for your redemption. Before you understood how to interpret the clock, He secured the best future for you by his blood. Likewise, before you see any need, your heart should be firm in God. Seek Him for who He is; of course He is also a rewarder of them that seek him. Embrace the redemptive work of Jesus – it is a total package. Rest assured that your challenges are infinitesimal when compared to His infinite love. God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else? (Romans8:32 CEV).Let this mind-set rule your heart always.
Tope Aladenusi
| “And yet we Jewish Christians know that we become right with God, not by doing what the law commands, but by faith in Jesus Christ …” Galatians 2:16 (NLT)
If you approached an average believer and said to him: “we become right with God by faith in Jesus Christ and never by doing what the law commands”, he would probably nod his head in agreement. But if you repeated the same statement by emphasizing on “the law”, for instance – “we become right with God by faith in Jesus Christ and never by doing the commandments in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, etc.,” you can be sure that he would not take it lightly with you and may even conclude that you are backslidden. This goes a long way to show that most of us do not really know the implication of what we claim to believe.
What gives you the assurance that God will answer your prayers? What keeps you going in your Christian race hoping that one day you will be with the Lord? What gives you the confidence that God’s blessings will be resident and manifest in your life? What makes you think the devil is under your feet? What drives you away from sin to absolute surrender to the almighty God? What makes you think you are still saved? For many of us, it is simply because we have been able to live by a set of standards. But Apostle Paul was quick to make us reason simply by stating that “… if we could be saved by keeping the law, then there was no need for Christ to die.” Galatians 2:21 (NLT)
The requirement for becoming righteous by keeping the law is expressly stated in Galatians 3:10 (MSG) – “Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.” Yes! There are only two possible scores you can have – 100% or 0%. Do we even know every detail of the law, not to talk of keeping it? Then why do we brag and think we exist in God’s inner circle because we have not lied, not killed, paid tithes or prayed thrice a day?
Am I saying you should carry on in sin? God forbid! I only want you to see the importance of launching from the right platform. In this new dispensation, if we always think we are getting God’s approval only because of what we have been able to do, then I am tempted to say we have not really started true Christianity. But I think a better way to put it is that “we are attempting to launch from a platform where we are bound to crash”. It’s like a plane trying to use the desert land as its runway for take-off.
Beloved, let’s get back on the right track and ensure we always launch from the platform of grace. If you have trusted in your efforts in the past, go to God in prayer with a heart of repentance. Live an excellent and holy life not because you want to be right with God, but because you are already right with God through faith in Jesus Christ. – tope aladenusi |
…for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; THAT WE MIGHT BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD in him. II Cor5:21
There is hardly any other subject so misunderstood in the body of Christ today as the subject of Righteousness. I have been a Christian for a while and in my own opinion the subject of Righteousness seems to be the least popular subject on most of our pulpits.
Of course our preachers do talk about Righteousness in a thousand and one ways but what I’m referring to is that Righteousness which was purchased for us at the expense of the shed blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God.I’m not talking about the Righteousness which is simply the gross total of a man’s goody-goody works. No! I’m talking about that Righteousness which is made available by grace and received through faith. Knowledge or ignorance of this Righteousness WILL AFFECT every area of your Christian life. I recommend an in dept study of Rom3:19–28 for a better understanding of this Righteousness.
Why am I talking about Righteousness? Because of what it entails.Righteousness means TO HAVE RIGHTS WITH GOD. It entails the Right to stand in the presence of God without a sense of shame, guilt or inferiority. It also entails the Right to receive from God by faith whatever he has made available through grace. That includes healing!
So if you do not know that by the shed blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son you have Rights with God, then you’ll keep having problems receiving your healing. Butwhen you know you have Rights with God then all you need to do is EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT! How? By Faith! Open your mouth and proclaim: I receive my healing now in the name of Jesus and don’t wait for your senses to comply, begin to act out your faith and things will change. Hallelujah!
Dr deji oyebamiji
And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond ON THE SABBATH DAY? Luke13:16
Religion and men’s traditions can rob you of your healing if you let them.Religion does nothing other than provide you with excuses why you should not be healed. With religion, something is always wrong. It’s either you’rethe wrong person or it’s the wrong day or you’re seeking your healing the wrong way.
The prostitute that wiped Jesus feet with her hair was the wrong person.The woman healed from her infirmity of eighteen years was healed on the wrong day. Blind Bartimeus who screamed at the top of his voice to get the attention of Jesus who was shielded away from him by the crowd was seeking his healing the wrong way. Nothing is right with religion, everything is wrong with it. If you listen to the voice of religion, you will not be healed!
There are thousands of believers today all over the world who are dying on their sick beds from one infirmity or the other because they accepted one or more of the many ‘religious excuses’ handed over to them why they should not expect to be healed.
Though these ‘excuses’ are many and varied ranging from ‘God no longer heals today’ to ‘God heals who he wants, when he wants,’ the answer to these many excuses can be summarized in one sentence. HEALING IS THE RIGHT OF THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ABRAHAM AND THAT’S WHO WE ARE! (Gal 3:6-7)
You don’t need to be a special person, have a special qualification or use a special method before you can exercise your Right. A Right can be exercisedanytime, any day and any where. Healing is your Right. Exercise that right TODAY!
Dr deji oyebamiji
| But he answered and said, it is not meet to take THE CHILDREN’S BREAD, and to cast it to dogs. Matt 15:26
The world is full of children and dogs. Some of us are children, all the others are dogs. That’s how God sees things. Imagine preparing a wonderful delicacy for dinner. Your children are up stairs playing with their toys to pacify their hunger a little bit. Then just as soon as you get through cooking, you set the table real nice and then go call all the dogs in the neighborhood to come and have a treat. There are at last 3 issues that will arise.
First, your sanity will be seriously put to questions. Second, your children will go hungry for the night. Third, those dogs would never appreciate your gesture because they cannot value it as much as your kids would.
Now you can see why Jesus said it is not meet (proper or fitting) to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs.
When Jesus made this statement, he was referring to healing because he made this statement to a syrophoenician woman who had a sick daughter and wanted Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus called her a dog because she wasn’t a daughter of Abraham and then said that the bread of healing only belonged to the children. This is the point I want to emphasize here. According to Jesus, if you are a child of Abraham (and you are if you are born again – Gal3:6-7), then healing is your daily bread. It belongs to you!
It is the responsibility of every responsible father to provide daily bread for his children and Jesus said if we asked our Father for bread, he won’t give us a stone instead (Matt 7:9-11). Do you believe the scriptures? Then, if you do, rise up and take your bread today. BE HEALED IN JESUS NAME!
Dr deji oyebamiji
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And ought not this woman, BEING A DAUGHTER OF ABRAHAM, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? Luke13:16
Healing for a child of God is not a privilege, IT IS A RIGHT!Privileges are products of preference but Rights are based on position. The most dangerous men on the face of the earth today are the men who know their rights.
Privileges may be pleaded for but Rights are taken advantages of. You don’t beg for a Right, you exercise a Right. But one very important point is: you cannot exercise a right that you do not know you have. Until you realize that you are a Son and not a Servant, you will keep begging in your father’s house.
Jesus was teaching in the synagogue one day when a woman walked in bent over with a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. For eighteen years she couldn’t lift herself up. For eighteen years she was a slave of sickness and disease until the day she was told by Jesus that it was HER RIGHT to be healed.
She walked into the synagogue when Christ was teaching and Christ halted his message to make one point clear: ‘Ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham be loosed from this infirmity?’ In other words, Jesus was saying: ‘If you are a daughter (or son) of Abraham, you have THE RIGHT to be loosed from your infirmity.’
That was a revelation to all that were in the synagogue that day because they didn’t know that before. If that woman had known that earlier at any time within that eighteen year period in which she suffered her infirmity she would have been healed. Why? What is your right is YOURS; it’s not about to be given to you. So when you know it’s your right, you simply TAKE IT. Like that woman, we are sons and daughters of Abraham (Gal3:6-7). It therefore follows that healing is our right. We don’t beg for it, WE TAKE IT.
– Dr deji oyebamiji
“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