“But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” James 1:25 KJV.
When I consider the final part of this discussion, three words/phrases readily come to mind. The first is to be a doer. Surprisingly, it originates from a word that means ‘to be a performer or an actor’. It reminds me of a theatre or movie script with the director simply saying “Play your part”. The script is not something you play lip service to but you ought to act accordingly because you are now assuming the role given to you. You don’t see the bad guy suddenly try to be Mr Nice guy in the movie all of a sudden unless the script says so.
For us as Christians, God is calling us to play out the part assigned to us. Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel – Phil 1:27. The word of God is not something to be chanted, simply turned into some lovely slogan or simply hung up on our walls etc The word of God reveals the lovely role/identity of the Christian, believer or new creature Christ paid by His blood to give freely to us.
Now note that this time it does not speak of a moment’s act of goodness. It speaks of our life. God is saying,’Play your part as the Christian you have been called.’ To be a doer is not to try to lace your own deeds with some few goodness of the Lord; like Ketchup on spaghetti. Rather, to be a doer is to live in the ever constant reality of who God has made us in Christ Jesus.
The second word or phrase is ‘to be blessed.’ This stems from the Greek word meaning to be well off or happier. The man who is a doer of the word of God is well off. He is better off. He is happier. He is fulfilled. He is content. He is living the life – the real life. He is not supposed to be the object of pity as the world would have us assume. He is living out destiny and purpose. He is fully equipped and fitted accordingly. I wish space would allow me to say more. The man living in accordance with the reality of who he has been made is reigning in this life. Because he operates in a dimension that is foreign even to certain spiritual beings as he is in harmony with the Father of spirits.
My searching out God’s word is to turn the blessedness I have received on the Cross of Calvary to reality. It ought to be an eye – opener into ever-constant realities.
I remember a brother who was always having regular bouts of illnesses that always seemed to coincide with the beginning of a new season. It kept happening again and again but while he was still contending as it were, he remained diligent in the study of the word. Then he fell sick again. This time he decided to pray to God as before for a healing. Still agonising over prayers, he remembered that God’s Word says he is the healed of God. It struck him all of a sudden that this is who God has called him and he ought not to view himself in some other light in spite of whatever contradictions his body might be telling him. Armed with that knowledge, his seasonal ailment is now a thing of the past. I see in him now a rare boldness. I see him now well off and better than he was in the past.
Permit me to say the blessedness is not in something extra. It is right there. While giving heed to the word, you seemingly draw it out. This reminds me of the expression ‘out of his bellies shall flow/burst forth rivers of living water’.
Lastly, let us take a look at the final word/phrase – Continue. This does not suggest a start – stop – start – stop order. Instead, it speaks of remaining or dwelling. Simply put: you and I ought to make living out the reality of who we have been made, a constant, permanent thing.
This reminds me of a cat fish my pastor had that leaped out of the local aquarium it was kept in while nobody was home. The poor thing didn’t make it. It was worse off. It was messed up. It lost out. It got frustrated and its poor frame was all that was left to tell the story. If only it had remained/dwelt/stayed in the locally-made aquarium.
The believer can be likened to that. The call to live in the reality of who you have been called is not a call because there isn’t any other thing to say or do. It is because you are wired to live as so. You can’t be content any other way. I find most people who are passionate about their profession find it difficult to stay in any other place. Call the doctor to the museum; that is a big -time stress. Call the accountant to the farm or the farmer to the hospital; you have some major depression coming soon. Bible says ‘If we live in the spirit, let us walk in the Spirit’ Colossians 5:25. I love the song writer that goes to say,’ I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold.’
‘There is a blessedness that comes from a constant, in – depth study of the word of God. Tap into this today. Seek this above all else. Things would soon start falling off you and you would be dazed to realise what you have now become or turned out to be.
Cheers
-Dr. Bolaji Akanni
| When I was a young boy, my mother taught me that I needed to plant a seed to bring whatever harvest I wanted in life. She used a grain of maize for an example; she showed me how the maize crop looked when it was harvested and linked it back to a single grain. As always, I believed my mum wholeheartedly. The next day, my siblings and I were drinking Cokes and my mum’s illustration on sowing came to mind. So I gathered up some of the bottle caps and rushed to our garden. I started “planting” them in spots I would commit to memory when my aunt appeared. “What are you doing?” she asked. I told her about the concept of ‘sowing and harvesting’ that I had just learned and that I planned to harvest some Coca-Cola in the future. She laughed sarcastically and called my mum to come and see what I was doing.
With the benefit of hindsight, I see that the principle my mum taught me was true, but my application was wrong (at least I haven’t harvested any Coca-Cola yet). Also, with the benefit of reading the scriptures, I realize that broadly speaking, there are two major areas where we sow, and they in turn affect who we turn out to be in life. Galatians 6:7-8 (GNB) says “Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant. If you plant in the field of your natural desires, from it you will gather the harvest of death; if you plant in the field of the Spirit, from the Spirit you will gather the harvest of eternal life.”
Beloved, none of your actions is insignificant. You are either sowing (or in the process of sowing) to the flesh OR to the Spirit. It’s just a matter of time, and you will get the result. You are the way you are today because of the seeds you sowed or some other person sowed yesterday. You don’t need to come tell me in 5 years how you have been living your life. I only need to look at your life then, and it will be easy to tell where/ what you have been sowing over the years.
A brother once told me he had serious issues with lust and narrated his misdemeanors against some sisters in his church. He needed help to get out of the mess. According to him, he had been praying about it. I said to him – ‘stop disturbing God; start sowing the right seeds’. He seemed surprised by my statement and asked what I meant. I asked him a few questions and his answers revealed the seeds he had been sowing; do you watch sexually explicit films? Do you sometimes look at pictures of nude women? Do you entertain fantasies of having some form of pleasures with those sisters? His answers to these and many other similar questions were – Yes. I then told him that when he did all those things, he was sowing seeds; he was passing ‘credit’ entries in his life, and life had come to make ‘debit’ entries for all those credits. As a chartered accountant, he understood that for every credit there must be a corresponding debit, and that really helped him see, in clear terms, how to start to change his life.
Keep sowing the right seeds as prescribed in the scriptures. There is no vacuum in life; your life will someday tell the story of the seeds you have been sowing. ———————————————————————– Tope S. Aladenusi |
| If you wake up in the morning and hear your dog barking or your rooster crowing, you don’t get excited and impressed. You don’t run to your neighbour and say – ‘Oh neighbour! Can you imagine this, my dog was barking this morning’. You know that would sound so strange. This is because your dog was wired to bark naturally and anything short of that is abnormal.
Likewise, when we live holy, healthy and victorious lives, God is not excited because he doesn’t expect anything less from us. The Christian life is a life of an all-round victory and success. Every step we take should exude the grace of God. Our actions should tell stories of the excellences of God. Anything short of this is not the Christian life.
Some of us used to behave very badly before we became born again. At those times, we had this constant feeling that God was fuming because of our terrible attitudes. So as soon as we entered into God’s kingdom and we were told that angels were rejoicing in heaven because we are saved, we got fired up. However, we are not really living the Christian life any longer; we are up today and down tomorrow. We slip into the excellent attributes of God and slip out the next minute. And surprisingly, whenever we manifest God’s nature, we think God is jubilating again.
How can He jubilate because you don’t care about the perishing souls around you in general, but today you decided to preach to someone? How can healing the sick and living in good health fire Him up? How can helping the needy make him bask in excitement? How can living a holy life one day in one month make angels to celebrate? How can donating to God’s work last year cause a roar in heaven? Are these not the things we have been wired to do naturally … and constantly? Are they not expressions of the purpose we are to fulfill on earth?
The Bible says in 1 Peter 2:9 – “But ye are a elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”. This is one major purpose why you are here on earth. God is pleased with the believer because of Christ’s work on the cross and we now have to make it our sole purpose to be pleasing to him. You are here to display your identity in Christ. You are here to live the Christian life that will naturally attract others to Christ. Don’t slip in and out of it and think God is excited for the moments when you get it right; you don’t expect your dog to slip in and out of ‘barking’. Also, don’t get too agitated saying “I do not know my purpose”. Obey the known purposes of God for your life and the things specific to you will be unraveled as time goes on.
– tope aladenusi
|
Why do you do the good things you do?
Whether we like it or not, this is a question we will all have to answer one day. It is an unpopular question that probes for the motives behind our actions. The reverse is the case these days. People talk only about the actions (what has been done) – “Oh! He gave a million bucks to charity”; “She has been moving across the Arab nations preaching the gospel for the past 7 years”; “That pastor is so nice, he visits all his members every month”; “that couple is so loving, they are always working together to bless lives”; etc. But God has made his position clear – “… I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart” I Samuel 16:7 (GNB).
Beloved, God will not reward us based on the size of the work we did for him; he will reward us based on the size of the heart with which we worked with him. 1Corinthians 3:13 (GNB) says “And the quality of each person’s work will be seen when the Day of Christ exposes it”. I think a good question to ask here is – how does God measure quality?
Every week I try to compose an exhortation and send to subscribers of Christ Lifeline weekly devotional messages. I remember there was a week I did not feel like writing at all and I didn’t want to send any message. But it occurred to me that I have a reputation of posting messages on a weekly basis. I immediately composed a message and sent it. Guess what? I received numerous testimonies from people who were blessed by that message, but I knew afterwards that I was ranking very low in terms of quality. Why? My motivation for writing that week was just to sustain my reputation. I began to see more clearly why some pastors have said that on the Day of Judgment, many will be shocked.
Why do you do the good things you do? Is it to sustain your reputation; retain people’s attention; obtain worldly satisfaction; or to maintain an impression? Men may give kudos to the outward form, but God will look at the motivation behind the outward form. One key yardstick God will use to judge our works is elucidated in 1 Corinthians 13:3 (BBE) “And if I give all my goods to the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it is of no profit to me”. Hmm! The most arresting outward appearance without a corresponding inward compliance to the rule of Christ’s love is utterly useless.
Apostle Paul understood this principle when he said – “we are ruled by the love of Christ …” 2 Corinthians 5:14 (GNB). Beloved, let’s start checking our motives before we face eternity. Before we commence or continue racing on any “good lane”, let’s ask ourselves – what is my motive? Let the love of Christ be our motivation so that when our work is made manifest in the day of Christ, we will receive a reward.
– tope aladenusi
I have come to realize bible reading is much more than reading to be able to parrot back. But bible reading involves a study of the bible with a heart ready to receive and be instructed in what the Word says we are. We can’t truly have made a study when we walk in contradiction to what we have read. There must be a saving of the souls in accordance with the word. There must be an awakening unto transformation in line with the word. This is the will of God.
It should be hard for us to see what the word says about us and walk contrary. We should find it difficult to lay hold on hate when the word says we ought to love.
We should find it hard to live sinfully knowing that we have received the very nature of God. This awareness comes to bear on us from a proper study of the bible.
Just as a man finds it difficult to wear bra and put on lipsticks so also we should not be comfortable discovering who we are in Christ and walking in opposition to it. A walk outside of who we have been made in Christ is a walk out of reality.
Learn to read your bible with a view to walking as God as made you. “… And if you will read what I have written, you can learn about my understanding of the secret of Christ”. (Eph 3:4 – Good News Bible)
– Dr bolaji akanni
We have at one point or the other in life played the role of being an enemy to someone, perhaps by omission or commission. But I’ve always wondered if God were to answer all prayers, most likely majority of those in existence today would not be. We often have prayed “let God arise and our enemies not see the light of the day” or they should be partially paralyzed, which means we should have suffered the same thing. But God is not a man, not even in His thought.
There is no doubt that it looks very unrealistic to bless someone who has played the role of an enemy, but it’s expected of us to do so. Let me ask you; do you think it looks realistic to be loved by God to whom humanity displayed the best of hatred at his son on his way to Calvary. Or you think it is one of those comic relieves in Bible, that when slapped on the right cheek turn the left?
Whoever the enemy is, or whatever he has done, God demands that he be loved. It’s this love that will motivate you to bless and pray for him.
“But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans so?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others do not even the publicans so.
Be ye therefore perfect as your father which is in heaven is perfect”. (Matt. 5: 44-48 KJV)
Would you choose to believe this charge from the savior of your soul, Jesus, or you still want to have your way?
– adeyiga awomuti
Let us carry out a very brief opinion poll. No cash prises though. Why would you not continue in sin?
A huge percentage says because sin is bad
Another percentage says because sin has terrible consequences.
Let’s consider God’s view point on this issue. Why should you and I not make a habit of sin?
What, shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Romans 6:1,2
But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named amongst you, as becometh saints. Ephesians 5:3
The reason you and I have been called to live a life free of sin is not just because they are out rightly evil or because they would prove to people something has come over you. Rather it is because we have been made new; in the very likeness of God.
Once we ran under the course of this world, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath … but now we have been set free with a new seal and mark upon our spirit.
We can’t be comfortable in those things anymore.
Imagine a fish given a remarkable transformation into a wild dog. You bet it would find the water less appealing. In fact it would abhor it totally. Not because it has anything to prove but because it’s new life runs contrary to that. It is a new being.
Consider this next time that urge comes to just give in a little. Realise you have been made new in Christ Jesus; A child of God in righteousness.
Don’t be fooled, God has not called you to a life of struggle with sin. You have been given the victory over sin. The word says that sin shall no more have dominion over you because you are under grace and not under the law – Romans 6:14. The slave it (sin) once had rule over is gone. There is a new man now around
Get out of that slave mentality to sin and all its devices. Realise you have got what it takes to say No and to live in righteousness unto God (Titus 2:11 – 13). I know you may have thought it is impossible to live free of sin. But thank God for the victory we have obtained in Christ Jesus. It’s no mistake when John said we cannot continue in sin. Note the word cannot. 1st John 3:9
Catch you next week
– bolaji akanni