Thursday, April 5, 2012

WOMEN: CROWN OF GOD’S CREATION

In these days a lot is been said about women negatively (though that is not the purpose of this write up), but we need to see how powerful a creation that women are. Two powerful scriptures that come to mind are: “The Lord gave the command, and many women carried the news’ Ps 68: 11” and “…. And the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent” Gen 3: 15.

God is waiting to see a generation of woman that will live on this earth, that will deal a very deadly blow to the devil and it’s works (no matter the devil hates women with passion) and you are one of them. Below is a list of women who have shaped generation past for God, so that you can take the baton from them and run

1. Mary the mother of Jesus: She gave us the saviour of the whole world. The price she paid was to be a virgin and she was singled out in her generation. Even though the world despises virginity, God rewards it still (virginity in this context is a decision to be CHASTE now that you are in Christ no matter your past.
2. Mary Magdalene: This woman was one from whom the Lord drove out seven demons, she was given to immorality but when she encountered Christ a radical turn around took place and she poured a perfume worth of one year’s wages on Christ. WHAT SACRIFICE WILL YOU RENDER TO MAKE YOUR NAME UNFORGETABLE IN ETERNITY?
3. Mary Slessor: She came to Nigeria in her twenties and she became one of the most celebrated foreigners that ever lived in the country. She translated the Bible to the first local language Nigeria (i.e Efik), literally shut the mouth of beasts in evil forest to be able to stop the killing of twins.
4. Mother Theresa: She was a Catholic Nun that spent about 70 years of her life serving the lepers of Calcutta, India. She made a statement that “If God can find any woman more useless than me, God can still use that person more than me” (paraphrased). She entered into her life ministry of helping the poor at age 18 years (think about your age, and do something)
5. Gloria Bamiloye: Mount Zion is one of the great Christian Drama ministries all round the continent. Little do most people know that the original vision for the ministry was from Mrs. Gloria Bamiloye (not even the husband)? She started pursing in school at your age and you can take a cue from her to begin to live highly focused and purposeful lives.

 God is still in need of such women as these enlist and run fully with God’s vision for your life, because the baton’s been passed to you.

DANGEROUS MINDSET OF LUST

Unlike many today, Jesus spoke of lust in the most sobering and even frightening terms. For instance, we are all familiar with the passage dealing with lust and masturbation in the Sermon on the Mount:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery;” but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matthew 5:27-30)

Before we blow over these well-known (and to many, worn out) words, we should stop to examine an important term Jesus used in this passage: stumble (Gk. skandalizo). It seems as though Jesus is saying, “If you occasionally have a spiritual lapse, you must sever the cause of it lest you be sent to hell.” How could that be the case? Would Jesus really send a man to hell because he “stumbles” in sin every now and then? Since these words don’t seem to line up with our ideas about God’s grace (“God loves the sinner”), most people tend to think that Jesus really didn’t mean what He said. But I want to say that Jesus made no mistakes in His statements. He said exactly what He meant to say and it is very dangerous to assume otherwise.
One of the reasons these words aren’t taken very seriously by many men today is that the English translation used here is very weak. The Greek term skandalizo is much more alarming than our English term stumble. Perhaps glancing at a couple of other verses where this Greek word is used will give us a better sense of what it really means:

“And in a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away (skandalizo).” (Mark 4:16-17)
“And at that time many will fall away (skandalizo) and will deliver up one another and hate one another.” (Matthew 24:10)
In the context of these two passages, we can see that this term refers to spiritual apostasy. But is that really what Jesus is talking about? Isn’t this term also used in a less dramatic way? Yes, and that is precisely the point. The strength of Jesus’ statement about lust and masturbation should be understood in direct correlation to each individual’s situation.

For instance, if we are talking about a godly man who “walks with the Lord,” but then—in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness—succumbs to temptation and lusts or masturbates, but repents and gets back on track, that would rightly be termed “stumbling.” On the other hand, the word stumble would not be the appropriate term to use for the man who regularly indulges in lust or masturbation. His sin is causing him to fall away from the living God.
Many men I have dealt with over the years have deceived themselves about their sin. They like to say that they “struggle” with lust or masturbation, when the truth is that there really isn’t any struggle going on at all: they regularly give over to the passions of their flesh. Peter described men like this in the Church of his day: “They have eyes full of harlotry, insatiable for sin. They beguile and bait and lure away unstable souls. Their hearts are trained in covetousness (lust, greed)… Forsaking the straight road they have gone astray…” (II Peter 2:14-15 AMP)

This is the sort of man who I believe Jesus is addressing in this passage: men who are habitually sinning. They don’t occasionally slip into the gutter; they live there. It would be very foolish for such men to minimize the gravity of Jesus’ words in this passage. He only used the term hell in a handful of occasions; in this case he used it twice. The implication of His words is unmistakable.
The deception many fall prey to is that since they remain faithful in their church attendance, they can’t be considered as apostates. A backslider is someone who has thrown off all semblances of Christianity and is living in open sin. However, much of the Bible is taken up with the hypocrisy of those who “honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me.”
From ALL NATIONS BAPTIST CHURCH, OSOGBO
Culled from: 2007 www.purelifeministries.org

EVANGELICAL CREATIVITY

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and by His understanding, the Heavens were established. Prov 3 v 19. This scripture talks volumes of what it took the Lord to establish the created world. This shows the secret of what happened in Gen 1: 1 when God created the Heavens and the earth in the beginning.
Now we are already at the end of the world and God is rounding up, and putting final changes to His created world. He is seriously laboring to see how, He can bring to a glorious end what was started some millennia ago.

A cursory look at the scripture will reveal that two major forces are running concurrently in these last days. One is that force of sin, which like a mighty Dracula is dragging men to hell, and making even the saints to become worldlier in outlook. The second force, which is the most important but unfortunately is the least emphasized; is that of God. The scriptures is replete with promises of what God intends to do in the final days in which we are. God has promised that “the glory of the latter house shall surpass the former” Haggai 2: 9 . I don’t think God is a failure; therefore in spite of whatever is happening in the world (and especially in the Church) we are rest assured that our God who is mighty in battle will eventually win, and that His best acts were not in Acts of the Apostles, but is going to be in the last dispensaAtion.
All these already stated, the question is; why are things going so slowly in the course of the advance of God’s kingdom?

I believe strongly that the reason is that there has not been enough Creativity in our Evangelism. It seems to me that, it is in secular pursuits that we put all our creative energies into. It is to be remembered that according to Jesus, the greatest of the commandments is to love the Lord our God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. (Luke 10: 27) This means our love for God must come from our hearts, it must be strong enough to have consumed our entire creativity and physical might.
Brethren it is high time we seriously rethought our strategies in reaching out to our lost world with the gospel. I hope we are not sincerely outdated in our outreach efforts. When Paul said that the preaching of the cross is foolishness to the perishing (1Cor 1: 18) He made it clear that the gospel was foolishness to them because the god of this age has blinded their minds (2Cor 4: 4) and not because the cross was presented in a foolish and uninterestingly dull manner.

There are a few suggestions below on creatively spreading the gospel:
1. Presenting scriptures  through games.
2. Sending of viruses, malwares e.t.c that isn’t really destructive to alert men about the imminence of the Rapture.
3. Mass-producing evangelically oriented, cheap cost designer T-shirts. This won’t be for purposes of a programme, but a real designer shirt.
4. Having a newspaper that will present world reports from the Biblical viewpoint, so that it will have a higher readership amidst the populace we are trying to reach.
5. Establishing sound businesses for the sole purpose of  financially supporting frontier evangelism. In addition, this will be done with a purpose of infecting men with prayer soaked commodities, which they will need from day to day anyway.
6. Having in every street a kiosk where CDs or DVDs will be sold, but from which correct message will be blasted all day long
7. Edge cutting technologies would be prayerfully invented to propagate the gospel faster e.g tracts exploder (for Arabian Peninsula), bulk SMS, using optic fiber to convey gospel writings in transnational.
8. Passing across scriptures (unconverted) in form of songs, raps, instrumentals e.t.c.
9. Prayer cover per square kilometer
10. The merging of the religious and secular spheres into one whole piece, controlled spiritually; hence resulting in engineers, doctors, nurses, business moguls of the spirit.
11. Doing all things especially day-to-day secular businesses with the sole purpose of advancing God’s kingdom in your heart and action.
12. Pursuit of abnormal excellence in all issues.
13. Locality mentality and not denominational mentality in the pursuit of kingdom agenda.
14. Tushing up of poor people (using Photoshop to tush them up)

EVANGELICAL SEDUCTION

The Scriptures say the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the earth and those who dwell in it (Ps 24 v 1). This ordinarily would have meant that the Lord will be the one solely in charge of the world and its affairs, but if that was true; why is there a lot of evil in the world? Divorces are on the rapid increase, suicides are now being committed by pre-teens, and abortions account for a considerable percentage in total number of deaths, there is almost no safe place again, as everywhere is rife with evil. The painful issue is that it has penetrated the Church, and many unseeming and unbefitting atrocities are being perpetrated by and inside the Church. Also as these  maladies are going on, it seems God is folding is hand: hence fulfilling the Bible portion that says “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” 1 John 5 v. 19.
Definitely, we know that as we approach the end of all things in the world sin will multiply and iniquity will abound as said in Matt 24 v 14. The fact also is that we think that somehow, sometime God will “miraculously” intervene in the matter. The Lord is definitely not folding His arms, but His questions remain “Whom shall I send and who will go for us” Isaiah 6 v 8. We shall be considering various ways evil has taken over and what we can do as Phinehas did to intervene.

Fields And Strategies For Counter Attack
The educational institutions: (especially the institutions of higher learning) have now become a breeding ground for prostitutes, cultists, drug addicts and various social derelicts. Many young girl enter the University has sincere and innocent virgins, but too often before such girls are half through there course of study the have turned into nymphomaniacs. Due to the unfair advantage taken by Satanic lecturers and student, some of these ladies are lured into a lifestyle of fornication and before long they have an uncontrollable sexual appetite. These have led more often than not to series of abortions being performed by the ladies. The question is that: where the Christian male lecturers and students? Could we have pursued these girls so that their feet might be established in Jesus in the manner that the godless men did? Many of these wicked people organize parties; volunteer to help just to lure the innocent one to believe they are good spirited and before long, one thing leads to another and all too quickly, the girl finds herself sexually attached to such a person. God wants us to intervene by organizing strategically and pursuing very strongly these young ones, in fact we must snatch them from the charlatans that they might have gotten attached to prayerfully e.t.c.
Also as promiscuous guys set a target for the number of ladies they must sample (have sex with) per semester, we must also set target for the number of souls we must rescue. It is to be recalled that the instruction of our master in Luke 14 v 23 “….Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled.” An example of a diabolically minded is a guy who at age 15 set a target that by age 21, he must have slept with 500 ladies. Much more we should also set target for the thousands of souls we will labour to save in s stated number of years, if we truly love the lord we don’t need to be career evangelists to do this

you have not gone too far; turn back now!!!

There was once a lady Sade by name; who made a sharp resolve to follow God and to do all her best to please God. She was dedicated to church and doing all her best to be of help to people around and the community. Things continued going well till she met Ade a Christian brother who decided to help her grow in the things of God and in her pursuit in life. This made her happy and she opened the door of her heart, but the joy was short lived. It happened that a day after Church service she escorted Ade home (since his home was along the way). On planning to leave, rainfall started falling in cats and dogs and one thing led to the other and eventually they had sex with themselves. This devastated Sade and she could not forgive herself. The sharp sense of guilt only made her to continue sexual affairs and soon other guys joined till she became her an addict. Before long she had committed four abortions for different guys, and Sade now believes God can never really forgive her and that her purpose can never be fulfilled in life again.

If your story resembles Sade’s story there is HOPE for you, The truth is that Jesus died for sinners, hear Him speak in Luke 5: 31 – 32 “And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” The reason why Jesus died is to save you, He is not disappointed in you to the point of being angry at you. He is waiting for you in tears remember that in Luke 15: 7 “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”

You can make God very happy and the whole heavens rejoice by turning back now, you can be sure that your destiny is secured so far you turn to him now YOU HAVE NOT GONE FAR, TURN BACK NOW.  True forgiveness is that God pardons you and SEES YOU AS THOUGH YOU NEVER DID IT.  Psalms 103: 12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
If God could forgive Saul of Tarsus, Mary Magdalene, Peter then He will not only forgive you, He will USE YOU MIGHTILY.

JESUS WILL HEAL YOU NOW

Maybe you are ready this letter now and you are having any sickness or disease you can be sure that the word of God is true when he said “for this reason the son  of God was made manifest, that He might destroy the works of the enemy” 1John 3:8. You need not entertain any doubt in your heart that Jesus can and is actually much interested in your healing. Taking a cursory look into scriptures there is no one who looked up to Jesus for healing that Jesus denied or told to come back at a later date. He is indeed “the present help in times of trouble ()” the scriptures says in clearly unmistakable terms that “call upon me and I will answer you and I will show you great and mighty things such as you have never seen (Jeremiah 33: 3)” note that God didn’t say I may answer you nut He said I WILL answer you.

I think some of my dear friends are reading this and you are saying “you don’t know the hopelessness of my case” well that may be the fact but the truth is that I don’t need to know the greatness of your problem so far I know the greater one who can solve all human challenges. Be it leukemia, HIV AIDS, cancer of (any part of the body), hepatitis e.t.c it might be as a result of intentional living in sin and you might be thinking that even if God will forgive you as a punishment He might not want to remove the disease. I make bold to say that is a lie Jesus died to forgive sins which includes the removing of all the penalties of your past sins. God has NO RECORD OF WRONGS HE IS KEEPING, the Bible says in Psalms 103: 12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

There is therefore no need for wasting time all you need is to come to Jesus NOW that if Satan could afflict you with this disease; then much more He that defeated Satan and all his hosts more than 2000 years ago is able to heal you NOW. If when He walked on earth He did not delay in healing, He has NO of delaying your healing now. Call on Jesus NOW if you are not born again, repent now and surrender the lordship of your life to Jesus (you will never regret it)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

EH STOP IT

Eh stop it and don"t try it, because the next attempt at committing that sin might be the end. Consider the following questions before venturing into that compromise:

  1. What if the next minute was your last on earth
  2. What if the full consequence of that sin comes t his time around
  3. What if what you think is secret is been spread around by the very people you think will shield you
  4. What if your partners in the sin have repented leaving you behind to your life of sin
  5. What if the RAPTURE takes place NOW.
Please carefully consider these questions and act repentantly. Please dear friend stop taking God for granted for behold the kindness and severity of God. He is both loving and His also a consuming fire (Hebrews 12: 29). For the eyes of God are to holy to behold iniquity, instead of falling to that sin why not fall into prayers beseeching God earnestly to deliver u from this moment of temptation.

God understands the severity of d temptation and just call upon Him asking for His help describing in details the way you are feeling and how weak you are to overcome the temptation. Remember He said in Jeremiah 33: 3 "Call upon me and I will answer you..."

As you decide to repent now God bless you

YOU LIVE ONLY ONCE

Daily in the newspapers and on TV there are a lot of adverts of obituaries of various people in the category are:

  1. Young and Old
  2. Rich and Poor
  3. Illiterate and Literate
  4. People in first world and third world countries
  5. Christians and Unbelievers
  6. Sick and healthy
  7. Good and Wicked people

All these people die and the funny thing is none of them could ever predict the day the died. Most people who die (and we are talking of at least 2 people per second) were never thinking of death at the moment.

This makes me go straight to the point I am making that YOU WILL LIVE ON THIS PLANET EARTH ONLY ONCE. Immediately you die or the trumpet blows that's ALL, you have NO SECOND chance. This calls for extreme soberness in our day to day living, because your decisions now will influence YOUR eternal status FOREVER (i.e for countless trillions of millennial).

Therefore seeing all these what manner of men ought we to be in ALL manner of holy conversations. This means that:
If you must repent of any sin , DO IT NOW
If you must do any restitution; DO IT NOW
If you must give anything to advance gospel; DO IT NOW
If you must intercede for anyone; DO IT NOW
If you must obey any divine instruction; DO IT NOW

Soonest it will be ALL over and you won't regret your life in Jesus name. I close in the words of Jim Elliot (missionary martyr to the Auca Indians in Ecuador) that "LIVE IN SUCH  A WAY THAT WHEN YOU COME TO DIE THERE WILL BE NOTHING ELSE TO DO THAN TO DIE"