An Unselfish Love.

Love Is...

Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.
It does not demand its own way.
It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Sin Nature

The other day I was reading John 8 : 1-11 during my study time. Below is the text:

1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

There are some things that just stood out to me when I read this passage. Not that I have never read it before, but as you know, the more we read the Scripture, the more things we discover and rediscover. First, Jesus did not address the woman in front of the Pharisees. Like the fact that they just brought a woman caught in the act of adultery did not bother Him. He ignores their accusations and begins to write on the ground. Some have said that it was each of them's sins that He was writing. This made me to pause, why didn't he even ask the woman to tell her side of the story in front of her accusers. But of course He is not interested in the story of her sin, He already knows it.

When we come into the presence of God, He is not looking at us as sinful. Yes we have sinned, but that sin nature is not who we are. God is more interested in us shedding our sin nature and living in the Spirit nature that He has pre-ordained for us. Yes He knows your past, but He doesn't get stuck there. Neither should you. When you get in His presence, your accusers vanish. Even He doesn't condemn you. One thing that He asks is that you turn away from the sin and embrace Him. Basically, shed your sin nature.

With All Your Heart

With All Your Heart

The heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised, delighted. For years she had been hoping he would pursue her. When they had been seated, he pulled out his Day Timer and began to review the goals he had set for her that year. “I wanted to burst into tears and run out of the restaurant,” she said. We don’t want to be someone’s project; we want to be the desire of their heart. Gerald May laments, “By worshiping efficiency, the human race has achieved the highest level of efficiency in history, but how much have we grown in love?”

We’ve done the same to our relationship with God. Christians have spent their whole lives mastering all sorts of principles, done their duty, carried on the programs of their church . . . and never known God intimately, heart to heart. The point is not an efficient life of activity—the point is intimacy with God. “You will find me,” God says, “when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). As Oswald Chambers said, “So that is what faith is—God perceived by the heart.”

What more can be said, what greater case could be made than this: to find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart.

(Waking the Dead , 48–49)

New Year, New Beginnings....

Welcome to 2010.

As Pastor Olutayo of Good Tidings Bible Church Int'l put it, this is our year of Marvellous Helps. May we all have great help from the Lord in this new year.
Have you thought about what the Lord is saying to you this new year? What direction do you sense that He wants you to go in? I can't say I've got it all penned down but one thing I'm purposing to do this year is seek Him more.

This new year we need insight, we need revelation. There's just so much going on in the world that we need His wisdom to help us navigate through. Let's start this year strong so that we can finish strong. Let's get Heaven's priorities and begin to work on the things that our King has called us to do.

Yes, at times it may seem that answers are not forthcoming as we would like. Let us not lose heart. If we faint not, we will reap a harvest. As we remain standing on the Word of God in every area of our lives this year, the Lord will send us marvellous helps.
So, I say all this to say, get in His presence and forge ahead this year!

Have a great 2010!

All In God's Timing (Part 6)

***

Labake had an exhausted look on her face. First Prince Osa just asked her out on an impromptu date now her mom is questioning her about who she was on the phone with.
"It was no one mom. Gosh!"
"Okay o, I won't be the nosy mom, but I know you have a date." Her mother smiled.
"Yea yea... you always figure things out." Labake smiled and shook her head.
With that they put aside the topic and talked about people back home and how the nation was doing all the way to her house. Labake was always interested in discussing the progress of the nation so much that people teased that she should run for office in Nigeria.

---

Prince Osa couldn't believe it. He had just made dinner plans with Labake. Now he was really going to find out if a relationship is worth pursuing between the two of them. At least this last conversation wasn't too bad even though she still pulled the "not interested in you" move which is every Nigerian girl's M.O. Should he buy her a gift or would that be too much? Especially since he's not yet familiar with her personality. She may not appreciate his gift and think he is just showing off. The last time he did that the lady accepted the gift but eventually walked out on him. Just at that moment, his cell phone rang.

"Hello?" He realized he hadn't looked at the caller ID and that his voice sounded gruff.

"My guy are you alright? Na sleep you dey sleep?"

It was Obinna his friend from his university days at Oxford.

"Obinna it's you. Abeg no vex. How you dey now?"

"I dey o. Body dey inside clothe. What's going on now? It's been a while since we spoke."

"Yes it has. I'm just trying to wrap up business on this end."

"Are those people really on board to invest in Naija?"

"My guy, dem get choice?" They both laughed.

"So we must celebrate then. When are you getting back to this side?"

"It'll be in another week. Got some personal business to take care of."

"Hmmm I trust you. You don find a babe no be so?"

"You should know now. Actually, I'll be flying down to see her. It was Toke that told me about her."

"Cool cool. Anyhow let me know how it goes with the babe o. But we're still on for celebrating right?"

"Definitely."

"Alright my guy, make we talk later."

"Later."

Prince Osa shook his head and smiled as he hung with Obinna. He really needs to get back to work.

Excerpt: The Sacred Romance

Her Heart Is Captured
12/14/2009

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In our psychological age, we have come to call our affairs “addictions,” but God calls them “adultery.” Listen again to his words to the Israelites through Jeremiah:

You are a swift she-camel
running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert,
sniffing the wind in [your] craving—
in [your] heat [how can I] restrain [you]?
Any males that pursue [you] need not tire themselves;
at mating time they will find [you]. Do not run until your feet are bare
and your throat is dry. (Jer. 2:23–25)

God is saying, “I love you, and yet you betray me at the drop of a hat. I feel so much pain. Can’t you see we’re made for each other? I want you to come back to me.” And Israel’s answer, like that of any addict or adulterer, is: “It’s no use! I love foreign gods, and I must go after them” (Jer. 2:25).

Perhaps we can empathize with the ache God experienced as Israel’s “husband” (and ours when we are living indulgently). Having raised Israel from childhood to a woman of grace and beauty, he astonishingly cannot win her heart from her adulterous lovers. The living God of the universe cannot win the only one he loves, not due to any lack on his part, but because her heart is captured by her addictions, which is to say, her adulterous lovers.

(The Sacred Romance , 134–35)

Encounter with Jesus

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.[b] 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
7"Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."

8Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."

11But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "

-John 5:2-11

I love this!

A man who had been sick, disabled by illness was just healed by Jesus. You would think that the people around him would join him in celebrating the wonderful thing that God has done in his life. But instead they begin to find fault in him. "How dare you pick up your mat?" "Don't you know it's the Sabbath?"

However, the man said something that struck me. He said, "The man who made me well said to me, Pick up yout mat and walk." Simple. I'm sure in his mind the man struggled with who to obey. The law of Moses or the One who just healed him. I'm sure being a Jew he knew the implications of picking up his mat on the Sabbath. Nevertheless he defied all that because something bigger than the law had happened to him. He had just had an encounter with Jesus Christ!

Our God doesn't want our empty formalities. He doesn't want us obeying because it is law. Rather He wants us obeying because we've experienced Him. Our obedience should come from a place of love and respect for a great King that we have encountered. Abraham gave Melchizedek a tithe not because he read in the law that it is good to tithe, but because he had just encountered the King of Righteousness.

Folks let us stop our empty formalities and let us really begin to encounter Jesus. Then will our obedience be true.

THEREFORE LET us go on and get past the elementary stage in the teachings and doctrine of Christ (the Messiah), advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity. Let us not again be laying the foundation of repentance and abandonment of dead works (dead formalism) and of the faith [by which you turned] to God,

-Heb 6:1