My Christian walk

Image from wallsheaven.com I've come to observe that I don't normally set high expectations for people as much as most of my friends do. For example, if someone borrows my jacket, I don't necessarily expect them to bring it back clean, smelling good, or something like that; I simply want them to bring it back, that's all. I might not expect someone to deliver a piece of work in two weeks, even when I know that it can be done in two days or even less. I simply expect that person to deliver the work when they said they would. I don't mind if they said in two months, or six, as long as they deliver when they said they would. Sometime back I almost ran mad because I couldn't understand why people couldn't live up to these seemingly low expectations. "I didn't ask for much, all I asked was that you do A or B." I would cry out each time. I always thought to myself, This person must really have low self-discipline, or they are just very unserious, imm...

Image borrowed from www.christianity.com During this time of the year, we get to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. He died for our sins to reconcile us back to God. We can not begin to imagine the magnitude of Jesus' sacrifice from the night of his arrest to the moment of his death. This sacrifice brings us to true repentance, which is asking for forgiveness and turning away from that sin. However, we see that from the garden of Eden, sin is not always that straightforward. We hate to undermine Jesus' sacrifice at the cross by continuing to sin, yet we find ourselves in sin over and over again. We often look back and wonder, How did I even get here? Today I am excited to share one of the best ways to deal with sin, among other different ways like prayer, accountability, and the word of God. This way is: Change the temptation into words that you fully understand. As I sought employment in an unfamiliar field some time back, a friend shared a few tips on how to make ...

Shutterstock image As I celebrate my birthday this coming week, I am wondering, what is wrong with me? For the past 10 to 15 years I have looked at myself in the mirror, sometimes for what felt like 5 minutes, and sometimes 2. But then I realized there is something wrong with me, the time I took looking in the mirror became less and less until when it could take me just about one second or so. That's when I realized what was wrong with me. I realized that be it five minutes or a second that I spent in the mirror, I always went there for one thing: my imperfections. Now, 90% of my face is clear, and by clear I mean pimple-free. But I realized every time I went before the mirror, I only focused my attention on the one or two pimples and black spots on my face. In spite of the fact that I visited the mirror every single day, I couldn't remember the last time I had looked at my entire face. Shutterstock image I realized that indeed something is wrong with us! I t's like we are ...

Image From Beliefnet.com If we were to practically bury all the dreams that get strangled every day due to "lack of experience", we would surely run out of land much sooner than later. You have a perfect idea, an idea so amazing that you are sure without a doubt it will work out, but the only challenge is that you do not have the working experience, so you throw it away. Please allow me to show you how and when you got qualified for that idea. While David was busy taking care of sheep, his brothers were training seriously. I mean, they were the nation's soldiers, they had all the working experience, and they had won many battles with the king before this particular battle with Goliath.  If David had looked at the usual, or expected work experience  as a major requirement to fight, let alone a giant man, he would have lost the confidence to do what he knew God wanted him to do.  Imagine if he had said, "God, why don't you ask my brothers, they are way more skilled...

Image from iStock Is it your business, anyway? | Callings. I listen to a good number of men and women of God and I get to see a wide range of ministries, from amazing ones to those that seem too much, the weird ones to those that just seem completely wrong to me. However, God has taught me that I don't have the right to judge another man's servant/service. "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? ...  " Romans 14:4  Yes, these women and men of God are called for us, but that doesn't put us in the position of a judge over them. Only the giver of the assignment does have the right to judge them. We are not present during any man's call to service, so we can't know the total job description of their assignment. Oftentimes, we sit in groups and pass judgment upon men of God about certain things that rightfully seem wrong in our eyes without understanding that we are not the caller of men. Please  Vote Mark Katamba When someone asks us abou...

Image from Godtv.com What do these people have in common? 1. Mary, in the story of turning water into wine [John 2:3-5]. Jesus says, "It's not yet my time." and Marry goes ahead to tell the disciples to do as He commands them. And then Jesus turns water into wine. 2. The Greek woman whose daughter was demon-possessed [Mark 7:26-29]. Jesus tells her, "... it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." to which she replies, "... even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." And Jesus says, "Because of that reply, your daughter is well." 3. Or King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:5) when the prophet told him that God had said he was going to die; he turned to the wall and asked God for more years and it was done for him. All the pronounced bible characters, Jacob, the woman with a bleeding issue, and many others seem to have moved God even when He didn't seem to have set out to move that way. God responded be...

Image from Freepik.com I love rules (strange, right?). I always love to know the rules and regulations not necessarily so that I may follow them, but to simply know how far inside or outside the line I might find myself at a particular point in time. There is a difference between knowing and believing, and I  am quite convinced that most of us do not fully distinguish between these two. We seem to think that we believe something, even though we simply have knowledge of that thing. For example, As a Christian, you know that God is your Father, you know that cattle on a thousand hills belong to Him, but when you are broke or troubled in any way, do you respond to that situation like a child of a president (God is the president of the world) would? Children of prominent people would rarely behave the way most of us do when we are broke; in most cases they'd be thinking of when they can get to talk to their father. Our actions usually reveal whether we simply know (about) something o...

Image from QuotesGram If you follow through, I believe today's article will positively impact not only your life but your business too. People normally draw their 10-year plan, our businesses, careers and nations too, usually have that 10-year plan, that big thing that is almost too good to be true. A good example is in the church, we usually have a magnificent image of the complete building that the church intends to build within 5 or 10 years. We look at it every Sunday, we contribute towards it today in preparation for then. The same happened to some church that I was part of about five or six years back. A few months ago I decided to pay that church a visit, and they asked the youth in the congregation to stay behind for a short meeting after the main church service, which short meeting I decided to participate in. As some of us gathered, others simply went their way as the youth leaders tried to get them to stay. A group of teenagers managed to escape, but while they  were a ...

Image from bahaiteachings.org Allow me to make the heading clear before some Christians start throwing stones me:  Hebrews13:5 is clear, "...I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Yes, however, there are times when we feel (keyword is feel ) like God has forsaken us, just like Jesus felt when he was up on the cross (Mathew 27:46). Am almost 100% certain that you are beautiful/handsome, and am also sure that you don't feel beautiful/handsome 100% of the time. Even though you are beautiful, the times you feel not so beautiful, tend to feel so real that you might even start behaving like an ugly person (whatever ugly people do), even though that is not true. When does God forsake us, or why does God let us feel like He has forsaken us? 1. When our pain is necessary. Jesus' pain was very necessary for our redemption and glory, I bet you agree with God letting him (Jesus) go through that necessary pain, even though he was innocent. So, similarly, regarding your pains a...

Many thanks to Saint Mary's Press What if God asked you, "What do you want me to do for you?" Without even thinking hard, I guess a bunch of us would most probably say, "Please give me wisdom!" Over the years, I've found myself silently hearing God asking me this question, just like many fellow Christians I talk to, and we all said that, "Give me wisdom." was our response every time. This is simply because we have been taught that wisdom is the most perfect prayer request one can make, just like king Solomon did when he asked God for wisdom instead of riches, fame and long life (1 Kings 3:9). We continue to learn that God was so pleased with king Solomon's request that he gave him the wisdom and also added to him fame and riches  (1 King 3:13). However, I now have a few points that I believe need to be considered before we crown "wisdom" as the most perfect prayer request: Wisdom doesn't always guarantee a good ending. Even with a...

Image from www.people.howstuffworks.com Setting new year's goals/resolutions is a good habit, which most times helps us grow, ensuring that we are better than we were the previous year. However, sometimes we set our goals and get so focused on them that we totally forget to ask God  what He has in store for us. As we set our new year's resolutions, I suggest we consider two sets of resolutions:  My-to-do resolutions God's resolutions for me My-to-do resolutions   These are things that we desire to do, areas we desire to be better at. And in most cases, there's a lot we can do in our capacity to bring them to accomplishment. But I find it quite interesting that we think we can do so all by ourselves, yet we can't even guarantee that we will see tomorrow. "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life...

Image from imgflip.com The disappointment I felt every end of year when I looked at the resolutions I had set to accomplish that year and I had not ticked even a single one of them off the list was too much. And yet, when you set your goals right, you'll end up setting resolutions that you'll manage to accomplish. And at the end of the year when you look at that list and realize you've ticked off almost everything of those that you'd intended to do, it's such an amazing feeling. I have come to appreciate the following 5 tips in setting resolutions that get accomplished: 1. Set goals that matter to you. In most cases, we find ourselves setting goals that matter to our parents, teachers, friends, neighbors or our society, which is why we often find it hard, or even pointless to accomplish those specific goals. That external motivation that comes from wanting to please those around us is not motivation enough to get us through from setting a particular goal to accompli...

Image from Pinterest How many weeks are in a year? Here it is: about 52 weeks! But how do I know this? Maybe because I Googled? But also because this lovely blog site has now made a year! On the 21st of  December 2019, we published our very first article: " Why the Festive excitement? ", after which 51 more amazing articles have come to you every single Wednesday. Happy 1st Anniversary, family! Leave my Merry in Merry Christmas It's that amazing time of the year, singing, food, dancing, bright lights, gifts, good music, weird sweaters, not for getting the miracles happening everywhere (by the way be sure that you  Don't miss your Christmas Miracle! ). However, in order for all this merrymaking  to happen, it's us to cause it to happen. Someone has to cook that amazing food we get to enjoy, in fact, to begin with, someone has to buy that food; someone has to buy those gifts, put up those lights, find the perfect Christmas tree, put together that amazing Christmas m...

Thanks to Abby Hahn on Wordpress.com Before the good news of Jesus' birth, God used to talk to His people through prophets. And just after the book of Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament, just so you know), it is said that God went silent for four hundred years, until the birth of John the Baptist (see  The bible Journey ). Yes, the gap between the Old and the New Testament is 400+ years: 400+ years of people not hearing from God, not even the one prophet they had left at the time (Malachi,  who died around 450 BC ). And all of a sudden, miracles started happening, angels  started visiting and singing, the Holy Spirit began pouring out on people, dreams started to be fulfilled and very old prophecies began coming to pass everywhere. At such a time as then, as no one was expecting to hear from God (and even if anyone did hear from Him, most certainly everybody expected Him to speak through another prophet or the teachers of the law), ordinary people started se...

Image courtesy of Jeff Weese on Flickr The learned, the unlearned, children, adults, men, women, Christians, atheists, everybody might have wondered at some point in their life, if Jesus Christ was really born on 25th December. Many say that He wasn't even born in December, because He wasn't born during winter, while others argue that seasons shift and that's why we now have snow in December. Emotions fly over the roof as opposers and proposers try to explain their beliefs about the actual time of Jesus' birth. And I love the fact that this time of the year brings a feeling of great joy all over the world, punctuated with bright lights, gifts, food, amazing songs, family time and more. My Mum, for some reason, refused to tell us (her children) the date when she was born. However, we decided to celebrate her either way by just randomly choosing a date. In spite of the fact that it's not the actual date on which she was born, I love the fact that we get to celebrate h...

photo by:  Contributed Photo New year, new goals. But before you chase that goal… I want to believe that most, if not all of us, want to achieve some sort of a better life. We each have a unique image of what a better life means to us: more money, better family, better job, bigger platform, more influence, you name it. We spend a lot of time striving to get to our version of "better", but very often we forget to look into the real cost that comes with this our version of  better .   Every good thing we can think of comes with a ' cross' The idea of attaining a "better life" tends to be so exciting that sometimes we sacrifice too much to get that better life; and sadly, oftentimes when we eventually get it, we realize that the cost was too much, and then we start to hate what we strove so hard to get. Every good thing we can think of comes with a  cross_  something attached to it: responsibility, accountability, too much work, limited freedom, and many ...

By Edobor Osasere I am not really good at expressing my feelings, be it the good or the bad ones. In most cases, I let myself either grieve or be happy in that particular moment, then I analyze the feelings later on when that moment has passed. In the midst of chaos, while people are dying at the hands of other people; people who had plans for their tomorrow, just like you and I; people who went out to buy groceries or simply pick up something small and never return. One really wonders what to write. I would have loved to write about children, about fancy places to visit, or about how to better each other as Christians, but you wonder how you start to put words to this white screen when your heart is hurting, when you are in deep sorrow for the loss of innocent civilians. Then I remembered how I have learnt to deal with emotions: 1. Acknowledge how you feel. 2. Allow yourself to grieve . As I am allowing myself to grieve for the unjustified bloodshed in my country, I chose not to go an...

Thanks to Ngozikaa! on WordPress From this previous article  you might recall that I mentioned that God chose to grow my faith through personal interactions with the Holy Spirit. He spoke to me directly almost every day through dreams, visions, convictions, knowings and His audible voice in times when I didn't have a  pastor or spiritual mentor. With this I found myself heavily relying on the active instruction of God to make any decision in my life, until a couple of years ago when that changed and I could only hear from God through His written word in the bible. You can't imagine how nervous I got every time I needed to make a decision, especially those major decisions, because I was used to God revealing things to me beforehand, and the Holy Spirit advising me on most things; but now, there was nothing, only silence. I cried, I prayed, I fasted, I begged the Lord for instruction, but all I got was a calm silence. Then I realized  that I needed to learn more about ...