Author: William

He that is from above, is above all.

Retirement (the Series): A Better Way

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Before we get into today’s message, let’s chew on the last cud for a bit:

 The whole idea of retirement defeats the heart of who we are and what we do before God.

In ancient Israel, there lay a variety of professions: Shepherds, blacksmiths, wine pressers, soldiers, maidservants, embroiders, carpenters, etc. As long as humans had needs, anyone with a bit of natural talent and a determined hard working spirit could take up one of those professions and be great at it.

However, there was an exception to this rule of work, a particular kind of role one couldn’t choose, one could only be born or called there: the office of the King & the office of the High priest/Prophet.

These vocations were especially important; God literally handpicked people a number of times for these positions. They share many commonalities, the oddest one being that none of them ever retired. They literally went to their graves as kings, priests, and prophets. A new king was installed after the previous king had passed on, a new high priest came on the scene after the death of the previous high priest, a prophet was still a prophet into his old age (the dry bones of one such prophet even brought back to life a corpse).

Like wine they became sweeter in their old age, time was given to make the prophet even more prophetic, the great king even greater, the serving high priest to serve, even more, this was a general function, though some abused it.

Would you like to know why these people retire or work to retire somehow? Good; because they are labourers and labour isn’t funny. There’s another reason: they have been worn out by the noise of the labour market. And would you have me tell you what the labour market is? It is the rat race. Priests/Prophets and Kings need not retire because they don’t play by the same rules on which regular people play.

If we take a peek into the life of priests, we see how God designed the rules by which they played: They didn’t have to keep jobs because every single thing that was brought to the house of God was theirs to keep. The meat of God’s house was primarily for them. They didn’t leave where ordinary people lived; they lived in the God Reserved Area of the land. They wore a special kind of cloth, beautiful not being word enough for it.

Don’t you find these priests a perfect representation of the birds that don’t sow, don’t reap and never gather into barns? From the details of the Aaronic priestly dressing in Exodus 39, you would immediately be reminded of the flowers of the field which don’t toil and don’t spin. In the same vein, Prophets such as Elijah and Elisha received provisions from God in ways too wonderful to behold.

On the other hand, if we look into the life of Kings especially David from whom Christ was to be revealed, we see something interesting: priesthood, kingship, prophecy all revealed. David went into the temple and fed himself food meant for priests, priesthood; he made deep utterances by the Spirit of God of the Christ, prophecy and he ruled his kingdom as a great king, kingship.

Do you see why jobs like these cannot be retired from? They’re a lifetime thing. You can’t retire because that would mean dying, right?

I hope you enjoyed all that we have shared on retirement. The final installment in this series will be rolling out next week.

Shalom.

 

Williams Udousoro,
Favour Omeje;
© 2019.

Retirement (the Series): The Rat Race

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Oftentimes, I hear a bunch of well-meaning Christian folk say, “It is the will of God for His children to have all the money they need so that they can give full attention to the word of God and prayer”.

Here’s how we would say this, in secular terms: “I need to make it big or at least well enough so that I can concentrate on my family better”.

Or we could say something like,  ” I need to have a steady source of income before I get married, I don’t want my fair lady suffering because of me”.

I used to say some of these things myself.

This is what I think: Every single person on this earth was born into a rat race, one won by only the fittest. People from the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria believe that the baby’s first cry which sounds like ‘waa, waaa, waaaa is a baby’s way of screaming, ‘ uwa, uwaa, uwaaa’ which translates to, ‘ this world, this world, this world’.

The cry is a lament about the world’s difficulties. Life is not fair, they say, and there’s no free lunch anywhere.

For this reason, parents teach their children to survive and when they have the wherewithal, they provide them education early enough to either survive or thrive in the struggles of life. One nation calls this thriving “The American Dream”. This dream is the ecstasy of freedom, of liberty which in itself consists mostly of financial freedom -after all, money answers all things. Nigerians call this emancipation, ‘ blowing’, and when they hit it big, they sing ‘ God win, I don make am‘. The English man would simply call it retirement.

Money experts, seeing the need for people to ‘make it’, have crafted strategies for achieving this. You have probably come across books that contain material like this. For instance, Robert Kiyosaki teaches his rich dad’s method of winning the rat race as opposed to things his poor dad taught him growing up. His rich dad taught him that the way to win the race was to do everything to get into the fast lane, decide what part of the BI quadrant to deploy to achieve that as soon as possible. And that meant making passive income and creating systems (assets) that fund liabilities ( things that take out money from the wallet) having known the difference between assets and liabilities.

This makes a lot of sense. But I am going to share with you an even better kind of wisdom, the wisdom taught by the greatest man who ever lived, employed by the wisest man who ever lived and one time wealthiest man of his time: Quit the race!

We will tell you just how to do this next week..

Shalom.

Williams Udousoro,
Favour Omeje;
© 2019.

Brave Heart

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Bravery is not in a particular action or deed. Its  an attitude, a hearts disposition.

A child who grew up in a farm exposed to wild horses is not really brave because as an adult he comfortably tries to ride a wild horse. His history has ensured it’s familiar and less threatening to him.

Its the one who has never had such history, who finds the wild horse scary and threatening but still attempts to ride it, that’s the brave fellow, that’s the courageous fellow. Its obviously out of his comfort zone but he’s still trudging on.

Bravery requires an expedition outside your comfort zone, outside the familiar, this might be tasting a dish you’ve never tried before, giving a speech in public, trying a new look, meeting a stranger, enrolling in a new course, learning a new skill, investing in a business or riding a wild horse. Some men are not brave enough to help their wives out at home, some women are not brave enough to stop worrying about their kids, some others are not brave enough to stop a habit or even to start the right one.

I’ve met macho men too scared to give a speech, pretty ladies too timid to say their mind, folks crippled by excessive concern about what others would think. People who hate things they’ve never even tried, forgetting that some of life’s most exciting times are those moments when our hearts beat rapidly, our minds run freely, those anxious moments of uncertainty that birth new experiences. That’s what golden memories are made of.

So this weekend, go on and be brave, be courageous, go out of your comfort zone and stay there till it becomes your new comfort zone, then go out and repeat the cycle again and again.

Bravery is being comfortable with the uncomfortable or at least comfortable enough never to let it stop you. Courage is marching on in the midst of fears and doubt and its shown more in the little things of everyday life.

#ThinkWell

#RedefineYourCulture

(C) William Udousoro

Justified to Hurt

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I lay down quietly in a boy’s only lodge as about 5 other young men spoke of love and ladies, one guy in particular told the heart wrenching story of how he loved a girl, so much and so truly and how she later left him simply because of another guy who had more money to offer, you could tell the hurt in his heart, he said he couldn’t get over her for months, he confessed there in the confines of us guys, that he truly loved with all his heart, and she broke it with all her might. Having been so wronged he explained how he could now without remorse play with any girls heart he could get his hands on, he knew the words, he knew the motions, he knew how to get in, get what he wanted and get out, without bathing an eyelash. In some mis-configured part of his brain he figured he was justified to hurt others as long he was pleased simply because he himself was once hurt.

Do you remember secondary school and particularly if you were in the boarding school? What was the number one reason SS3 students gave for acting cruelly to junior students? ‘Because they did it to me when I was a junior student!’, that was and still is the main plea by many, because as junior student some senior student took their foodstuffs they are now collecting foodstuffs from the entire student body!

It’s like the old an eye for an eye, but remember an eye for an eye sooner or later leaves everyone blind. There’s something in the average human’s subconscious that tends to do to others what have been done to them, that’s why the molester today was most likely abused as a child. It’s a vicious self-supporting cycle, running through generations and even ages.

It’s like the old an eye for an eye, but remember an eye for an eye sooner or later leaves everyone blind.

But yet the reverse is also the case; As a Jambito several years ago, I went to the newly established Federal university, Oye-Ekiti to write the screening exam required to gain entrance. I entered pari passu the setting sun, with little money, no friends and no contact, I had no place to stay and the stories of bandits who prowled at night did not in any way comfort me. Not too sure what to do I went out of the school compound and sighting some young men close by I went up to one of them and simply asked who I could meet for some sort of accommodation, he told me to follow him, he walked me into a room in a joint condo of sorts, pointed a bed and told me to stay there. To cut the short story shorter, I along with few other stranded Jambito’s ended up becoming buddies for the next 3 days of our stay all at no charge, no cost and no hidden agenda. I asked him later on why his magnanimity to us strangers, he answered simply ‘he was once a Jambito and someone took him in!’.

You see, cruelty of many ages can end in one generation, if the last person to contract Aids was the last person to spread it, HIV/ADIS would be only found in the history books in just one generation. You see you have a choice, you’re not just a biological psychological creature who’s actions and reactions are cast in stone based on the hand life deals you. You can let the hurt you suffered snare you into hurting others or you can break out of the mold like so many others have and change the culture that tried to change you from something beautiful to a shadow of your true self. We’re never justified to hurt because we were hurt, no matter the form, it’s a warped way of thinking that leaves everyone bleeding. You can break out of it, you can start a new cycle, you can set the new patterns for your children and your children’s children and the world at large. We have enough bad news to go around twice, we have enough victims who victimize and troubled people who trouble people. Let the pain motivate you to make a difference, not to even the score on people who were never in the picture in the first place.

We’re never justified to hurt because we were hurt

It was Jesus who brought the radical idea of loving your enemies and even praying for them, imagine; praying for the thief who stole from you, loving the idiot who swerved at 130km/hr in front of you on the highway while making a call, forgiving that guy who used you and dumped you. I admit, these are noble ideals too high for the vast majority of us, maybe that’s why Jesus offers to walk with us as we walk through the hurt, and he will, that is, if we let him.

It may not be popular, you may feel out of place, you may be called a fool, but the freedom from the hurt is in repaying it with love. And truly as it has been said; it’s love that makes the world go round.

…the freedom from the hurt is in repaying it with love

Udousoro William (2018)

C.S LEWIS: A biography

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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but
because by it I see everything else …

C.S Lewis

 

Quick Facts
Full Name: Clive Staples Lewis
Born: November 29, 1898
Died: November 22, 1963 (aged 64)
Work: Writer, Apologist, Poet, Scholar
Most Popular Works: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters.

Known by friends and family as Jack (a self given name he adopted up after his dog
Jacksie was killed by a car). You could say he was a man born before his time in many
ways or rather still a man who launched the world to new times by his rich imagination
and rigid faith.

Born in Belfast, Ireland (present day Northern Ireland) into the well positioned family of
Albert and Florence Lewis. As a young lad, his imagination ran free with a particular
fascination of anthropomorphic animals, he and his brother Warnie soon created the
world of Boxen, populated and driven by talking animals. His appetite to read was
stirred and well watered by his parents who stocked the house full of books, his dad
being a solicitor and his mom a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland (a fit quite
rare for women in those days). Lewis himself being a bit prodigy himself was reading by
age three and by five had begun writing stories, he fed extensively and voraciously on
those books, he writes in his autobiography, Suprised by Joy “endless books… There
were books in the study, books in the dinning room, books in the cloakroom, books (two
deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as
my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds” and none was off limits to him.
Life took a not so pleasant turn when his brother Warnie was sent off to boarding
school in England, leaving the young Lewis alone, he became somewhat reclusive,
spending more and more time in books and his imaginary world of dressed animal and
knights in armor. Things went even more sour when he turned 10 and his mother died
of Cancer, he became even more driven into himself and his books, his father never
really fully recovered and this led both boys to feel even more estranged from their
dad. His mom’s death planted a seed of doubt in God, he reasoned that God, if not
cruel, was at least a vague abstraction. About five years down that line around 1912 (in
the tender teen age of 15) and with the additional influence of his boarding school
(where his father had now enrolled him) and, Lewis abandoned the Christian faith and
became an avowed atheist, he later described his young self as being paradoxically
“angry with God for not existing”.

 

By September of 1914 Lewis was sent to Great Bookham, Surrey, to be privately tutored
by W.T. Kirkpatrick, this man had a tremendous effect upon the young Lewis, he
introduced him to classics in Greek, Latin and Italian literature. Being a tutor that must
see result he helped Lewis learn how to criticize and analyze, taught him how to think,
speak and write logically. After nearly three years with Kirkpatrick Lewis had grown in
bounds and leaps in his literary academic prowess, this showed in his success in the
scholarship examinations at Oxford and later in his outstanding performance at
University College, grabbing highest honours in honour moderations, greats and
English. His hardpressing mentor also helped him reinforce his atheistic beliefs, but his
admission to Oxford and the associates he would soon make would cause the budding
Lewis to rethink his God-void universe.

He entered the world of Oxford in 1917 and in a sense he never left, despite the call to
fight in World war 1 and his professorship later in life at Cambridge, he always
maintained his home and friends in Oxford. During World war 1 he and his college
roommate Paddy Moore, made promises to each other, that if either of them should
die in the war, the other would take care of the deceased’s family. Paddy Moore died,
Lewis kept his word and took care of Paddy’s mother, after completing his first degree
in 1920, Lewis decided to share the same lodging with Paddy Moore’s family so that he
could more carefully look out for their needs, this kind gesture got Lewis outside of
himself and taught him patience. Soon the books The everlasting man by G.K.
Chesterton and Phantastes by George MacDonald began to dig through his stony
atheistic heart, he would later write of the book Phantastes “what it actually did to me
was to convert, even baptize…my imagination”

 

The years went on but distress in the stony heart of Lewis only kept increasing, friends
from his student and post student life like Owen Barfield and Nevill Coghill often
pounced on the logic of Lewis’ atheism. He would later meet two more Christians with
whom he became close friends; J.R.R Tokien (author, Lord of the Rings) and Hugo
Dyson. Eventually the two paths converged in Lewis’ mind: one was reason and the
other intuition, he vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought back into
Christianity like a prodigal, “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every
direction for a chance to escape”. He painted his final struggle to come to God in his
book Suprised by Joy, “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen[College,
Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my
work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.
That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave
in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the
most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”

After his conversion to Theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, after a
lengthy talk and late night walk with his close friends Tokien and Hugo Dyson. He
became a firm member of the Church of England -somewhat to the disappointment of
Tolkien, who had hoped he would join the Catholic church.
The second world war, proved to be a set time for C.S. Lewis, he spoken on radio from
1941 to 1943 by the BBC while the city was under periodic air raids, these broadcasts
were widely received and ministered greatly to the people, also increasing the
popularity of Lewis. After the war in 1951 he declined a honour by George VI as
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in order to avoid association with
political issues.

It is interesting to note that with the increase of Lewis fame came other pressures,
numerous invitations to entertain guests, grant interviews, give lectures and preach
sermons. And even though he felt called by God to write, he likewise felt it was
required of him to counsel all those who came all the way to his home. As his books
became popular he was flooded by letters, and because he believed that it was Gods
will for him to answer most of this mail himself stating that there were “no ordinary
people” he took his time to write with care to each correspondent regardless of age,
education, or place in society, needless to say this consumed many hours each week.
Joy entered his life in 1956, literally. Joy Davidman, an American writer also a convert
from Atheism to Christianity became Mrs Lewis. She and her two teenaged kids
changed C.S. Lewis’ life for the better. His happiness can be seen in a note he wrote to a
friend soon after they got married “it’s funny having at 59 the sort of happiness most
men have in their twenties… ‘Thou hast kept the good wine till now’.” She brought him
love, companionship and tow stepson with all its accompanying drama, she also
encouraged him to renew his writing of apologetics. Unfortunately his Joy was short
lived as she died of Cancer 4 years into their most blissful marriage. Lewis was quite
devastated by this loss and describes his experience of bereavement in his book A Grief
Observed, he expressed his feelings in such a raw and personal manner that he
originally released it under the pseudonym N. W Clerk to keep readers from associating
the book with him. Funny enough, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a
method of dealing with his own grief.

 

C.S. Lewis was a reputed Scholar, prolific writer and noted Novelist who infused Biblical
themes in his story lines, his novel, The Pilgrim’s Regress following John Bunyan’s style
in The Pilgrims Progress was the first of Christian publications he would make and more
were sure to follow. The Chronicles of Narnia in particular, which has been adopted
both into feature films and programs carries the biblical theme of Christ (Aslan in this
case) who basically gives his life for the salvation of those He loves and comes back to
life again. His book, Mere Christianity was voted best book of the twentieth century by
Christianity Today in 2000, he has been called “The Apostle to the Skeptics” due to his
approach to faith, presenting a reasonable case for Christianity, other books in this class
include, The Problem of Pain and Miracles. In 2008 he was ranked by The Times as the
eleventh on their list of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945”
Lewis died at the Kilns on November 22, 1963, buried beside his brother who passed on
10 years later, he authored more than 70 titles, including works of science fiction,
fantasy, poetry, letters, autobiography and Christian apologetics, Lewis’ book sales are
reported to be more than 2 million annually.

References
http://www.britannica.com/biography/c-s-lewis
http://www.biography.com/.amp/people/cs-lewis-9380969
http://www.explorefaith.org/lewis/bio.html
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/c._s._lewis
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues//issue-7/cs-lewis-profile-of-hislife.
html#storystream
http://www.cslewis.org/resource/chronocsl/

A thing about Faith pt4

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On Faith for Creativity
This actually is not a particularly different revelation for only being creative, if applied it will produce results in every other area of life, faith for being creative in your writings as a poet is not different from faith for provisions, faith for healing, faith for anything really, it’s still the same principle only now concentrated on the particular gift of writing with inspiration (creativity).

3 Principles
Believe you are anointed
Stir the waters in your spirit
Meditate and give it expression

Believe you are anointed because you are, let me explain a little what we mean by the anointing; the anointing firstly, is not a bottle of oil, it is the enablement to carry out a task you have been assigned, the power of the Spirit of God in you at work through you to accomplish His purpose for you. For example, if my boss were to send me on an errand of satchet water purchasing, he gives me N300 for the work, N200 to transport myself going and coming and N100 for buying the water, you see that money given in this scenario is THE ANOINTING, it is the enablement by which I will carry out his assignment.
So if you ever feel God has called you or mandated or talented you to do something, then know with that call comes the anointing, you don’t need to be pray to be anointed for what you’ve been sent to do, the ability to coin words, frame stories, make characters, write exquisitely and express fluently is already upon you oh dear writer! Believe it!, believe it with every red blood cell of your body, you must believe not just in Gods power but in Gods power at work in you, have faith not just in the Word of God but in the Word of God in your mouth, the Word of God in your heart, the Word of God in your pen.

Stir the Waters, I’ll explain using the man crippled for 38 years waiting for the angel who stirred the waters every year, hopefully you know the story already. In those days before the Spirit came to dwell in us, they had to go somewhere to get a miracle, they had to meet someone to hear the Lord, they would need external help to be helped but now in this new covenant we don’t need to go anywhere to access all the help we need. Why? Because the Helper Himself has a new permanent residential address in our spirits, Jesus said “out of your belly (spirit) shall flow rivers of living water”. Do you see it? Back then they went to the pool of waters, today, the river flows within us.

We don’t go looking for a miracle, we are the miracle happening everywhere we go!

So what do we do, we stir up those waters of ideas locked in our spirits, those waters of insight, of plot and of character, it’s all within us and we can and must stir it till it finds expression all over the pages of our books, we stir the gifts within us as we pray in tongues, as we commune with like minds and commune this faith and these truths. Have you never heard a person’s testimony and you felt like going to pray? Have you never seen a picture that made you burst in tongues? Put the vision before you, paste it on the wall, buy a world atlas and place it on your roof, open your eyes from sleep to see it and gain motivation to change your world, stir yourself and let yourself be stirred by the Spirit.

Meditate, the idea of meditation is not a hermit locked in a mountain chanting kumbaya. No, a thousand times no, it simply means carrying in your thoughts actively and on purpose a particular line of thought, it means to so dwell on it you begin to mutter it, your begin to roar it. O dear poet, many a times you must go to a quiet place and maintain a quiet mind and focus all that energy on the seed of idea God has planted in your spirit, as you do this, it begins to germinate, and grow and become a fruit bearing tree from which the whole world can eat. And once you have a sniffling of an inspired thought express it, by jotting it down, immediately somewhere, anywhere you can later reference it from. Many a great stories and songs have been lost by poets who felt their heads were magnets and the words metals. Please, our minds can be very short-term at times, treat preciously the ideas that come your way and save them, and from there meditate on it and develop it and save it again, and continue this process till it’s a tree so big you don’t have to worry ever loosing it. I hope this blessed you!

 

 – Williams Udousoro

A thing about Faith pt3

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On Hindrance
I had earlier begun on the premise that for the believer, faith is natural; its his mother tongue, his lingua franca, his only tongue really, but alas this is not the daily experience of most believers. We normally find ourselves like the man who brought his son to be healed…

Lord I believe, help my unbelief.

The problem of Faith is never the opposition we face, it’s not the mountains or the giants that challenge us in daily life, many times those temptations we fall for, only show that something within us is not quite right. The children of Israel’s problem was never with the mightiness of the Philistines or the multitude of Assyrians, it was always a matter of their current state with their God. So also, it’s not for plenty witches from our villages but that we’ve not settled the fight in us, as has been said; win the battle within and you’ve already won every war without.
‬ I’ll explain the hindrance to faith using the parable of the Sower, the parable goes…

Bros farmer went a sowing and his seeds went every all the where, some on stony grounds, some on the road path, some on thorny ground and some on good soil.

Jesus told us the meaning; the ground represents the heart, the seed represents the Word, the problem was not with the seed but with the ground, the heart is where the Word (and remember faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word) lands, the problem is the system of this world in which we live have been planting stones, rocks, concrete, mines, and every conceivable anti-seed material in our minds and so it has given us a system of thinking, of believing, of seeing things and of responding to things. So powerful it is that even when we get born again our spirits are made perfectly as Jesus is but our minds have to be renewed, that is made anew. Hence Romans 12 says“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”, its like saying, now that this land (heart) now belongs to farmer Jesus, go get the Tractor of the Word and overhaul EVERYTHING! Get all the stones, thorns and other junks out of the ground, and remember some of this stuff has gone down so deep, but must all be overhauled, and so that the heart can now become the good soil and receive the engrafted Word and bear fruits.
‬In English what I’ve been saying is; the hindrance to the Faith of God in us is the things we faith in already, she believes if he’s not from her village he cannot be a good husband, so she will leave the Angel from the next village and marry Lucifer dressed in a tuxedo all because he’s from her village. That mindset is a stone in her heart that will choke the Word and make it unproductive. They’ve told him all male from their family becomes asthmatic at a certain age, that it’s a natural hereditary condition in his bloodline, he has swallowed it, asthma will soon be the portion of this blood-bought child of God. He, like the Pharisees have made the word of God of no effect by his traditions (that is by staying with the norms of this un-renewed worlds mindset), the list goes on.

‬The Cure
The cure to the problem is still the Word. God pours out His spirit of Faith, God pours out His all and already He has but the problem is not God giving, it is us receiving. Like Rom 5 says, “they that RECEIVE the abundance of Grace…shall reign in life”, our mind is cleared of the crazy as we stay on God’s Word from personal study and listening to relevant teachings, so poet or pastor if you don’t have a consistent personal time of study of the Word and of prayer, you can’t receive all God has already given you and you can’t express all that is already within you. This point calls for more but I’ll stop here for brevity sake.

– William Udousoro
‬

A thing about Faith pt2

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I said earlier Faith is natural for the believer.

The thing about faith I always look at, is not so much how much of it you know or can say but how it affects your everyday life, when the bible says we walk by faith and not by sight what exactly does it mean, does it mean we are to go about parting red seas and multiplying fishes to show our 6 packs and biceps of faith? I don’t think so (at least not always)! The Life of Faith is simply living your everyday normal life based on Faith, based on the Word, based on your belief in that Word. So someone asks you for something and you actually believe it is better to give than to receive so you part with that item; that’s the life of faith, you are living by faith when you refuse to listen to your family who tell you not to marry him because he’s from Edo and you’re from Ebonyi because you believe in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, it is a life of faith when you choose to pray for the thief that stole your phone and sentenced you to Nokia Torch because you believe bless those who persecute and pray for your enemies, it’s a life of faith when you, against your insecurities and inferiority complex, choose to write and publish that book because you believe that the greater one is in you and He that is born of God overcomes the world, it’s a life of faith when you choose to forsake that ungodly habit because you believe my body is the temple of the Lord, the Spirit of God dwells within you. It’s a life of faith when you say we would rather fail honestly than succeed deceitfully because you believe God is a rewarder of all they who diligently seek Him, it’s a life of faith when you believe that you are still a beloved child of God even when you’ve made a mistake because you believe that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and the blood of Jesus washes you from all iniquities.

It is not a life of Faith just when you stand on a stage with a suit like a pastor in a healing service, it’s a life of faith when you can lay hands on the cripple who begs by your street corner because you believe they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, its a life of Faith when you believe for me to live is CHRIST and to die is gain, when you are ready to lose your life for the sake of Christ, its a life of faith when you ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart and you lean not on your own understanding’, when you agree to be led by the Spirit of God, even when it makes no logical sense; this is the beginning of walking by faith.

 

– William Udousoro