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Jesus became man so that I could become God, so if the son of snake is a snake, then the son of God is a God
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To be Godly is to be like God.
~John 1:12~
JUST DIE (MY LETTER TO THE STRUGGLER)
Dear Struggler,
This is going to be a long letter but I beseech you to read every word of this. I am trusting God to use it and help you.
Easter is one remarkable season to Christian faithfuls as it commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Over the years, preachers and writers alike have done phenomenal jobs telling and retelling the story that can be referred to as a very important biblical folklore. This story took on a somewhat wider reaching dimension when it was told using motion pictures. One of those movies was “The Passion of The Christ”, which you must have watched.
Moving forward, I particularly at some point was a little concerned with the way this story was told over the years and its intended effect. At one time, this story becomes so compelling that it calls for sober reflections. At another time, it is told in a way that it scares people away from its true essence. I guess it must have covered you with goose pimples when it was told. Howbeit, this is the greatest story ever told.
I will not bore you with details because I assume you are conversant with this story; from the betrayal, to the arrest, to the denial, to the trial, to the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. You really did not need to have been born again to be able to tell that story. So I will not dwell here, I will move this thing forward.
Like you, I thought I was used to the story and all of its significance. But God set to show me a part of this love story that swept my feet off the ground. I never really paid attention to this part, but God took me there. It is found in Matt. 27:54 and I will quote from the New King James Version:
Now when the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the son of God.
I will come back to that text but, let me take you a little back in time to a board meeting Jesus had with His disciples in- Matt 16:13-19. By this time Jesus had done a lot of miracles at different times and places. He had taught the people things that were not conventional with the way the teachers of the law taught them. As a matter of fact, by this time, He had not told anyone yet who he really was. However, he knew (possibly by instinct) that people were saying a lot of things about Him. Here He was, trying to know who people are saying that He was.
This situation may not be a stranger to you. You do your best to keep abreast with the personality you put out with every rise in popularity. As you carry out your assignment and carry yourself as a Christian, somewhere in your mind you hope that people are seeing you for who you really are. You take out time to check on what people around you are saying about you. I am not saying it is a bad idea, even Jesus found Himself in that place where He wanted to know what people are saying about Him.
Well, Jesus’ survey showed that people where seeing him, not for who he really is but in the light of what they see him do. They saw Him as a prophet because they were used to prophets performing all manner of signs and wonders. They did not see Him as The Son of God. As a matter of fact, He was addressed as The Son of God on two occasions prior to this board meeting: The demons that possessed the Man at Gergesenes and the disciples when they saw Him walk on water. Outside the disciples, no other person saw Jesus as The Son of God (Even John, the Baptist, doubted the son-ship of Jesus at some point). When He declared it before the high priest, He was tagged as a blasphemer (Matt. 26:63-65). While on the cross, people mocked Him with it. His declaration of the truth that He was The Son of God was not enough to make the people other than His disciples believe it.
Let me take you back to the text. As I dwelt on this part of the greatest love story ever told, I could not help but ask:
WHY DID PEOPLE WAIT FOR JESUS TO DIE BEFORE ACKNOWLEDGING HIM AS THE SON OF GOD?
Is it not interesting that the Centurion and the other people around declared Jesus The Son of God just after He gave up the ghost?
I simply wrote this long letter to submit to you that your place in God can only be relevant to humanity if you can JUST DIE to yourself and be alive in God. That way, you neither need argue with people about who you are nor do a survey to know if people really get it that you are a Child of God. Jesus had to die to His flesh, when He gave up the ghost on the cross, for men who are without to come to know him as The Son of God that He is. I do not doubt that you have been born again, but yet people cannot identify you as such. JUST DIE to your flesh and be alive in Christ (Rom. 8:13-14, Col. 3:1-6).
As I drop my pen, I want to ask that you pass this letter to other people when you are done reading it. Understand that you are not the only one struggling right now, there are billions of people that needs this letter.
Thanks and God bless you.
Your friend,
Ibeh Uche Sam
©TRANSFORMING WORDS SERIES
http://www.transformingwordseries.wordpress.com
#EVERYDAYJESUS’ mutants speak love!
Mutants speak love!
Every people have their language. Mutants also speak something. They have a language. Language is a means by which a group of people communicate with themselves. Mutants, members of God’s family relate with each other by loving. Loving is the only thing Jesus wanted them to ‘do’. Well, love is not natural to the non-mutant. It is a genetic thing. Love is an expression of the mutant genetic make-up. Mutants have a common Gene that codes for love in their DNA. This Gene was that which Paul calls a seal, or deposit guaranteeing that which is to come. Jesus teaches us that the very best way to love i.e. express the genetic code is to put our lives in line for our friends (the mutants).
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If (very optional) you obey my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in His love”. John 15: 9-10 (NIV).
“My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that a man lays down his life for his friends.” John 15: 13
Jesus achieved two things by dying: bringing mutation by faith, and teaching mutants the family language.
Love is one of the genetic expressions of mutants, and mutants express or (like every language) speak at will. That was why Jesus said ‘if’.
Paul encouraged mutants in Galatia, Corinth, and other places to express this Gene because that is how mutants express faith. The best way mutants can speak to themselves is by putting their lives in the line for each other.
Par exemplar
- If I was given an orange to share equally with a fellow mutant, and I cut this orange into two halves, and somehow I really felt like having some more oranges. Perhaps my mind tells me that one of the halves appeared bigger. The natural thing to do is to consciously or subconsciously secure the supposed bigger one for myself simply because I ‘felt like oranges’ that day. On the other hand if I consciously give up my desire for oranges, and give my mutant brother this supposed bigger half even when he never seemed to care or notice, then I have loved. I have given up my interest (life) for my friend and that is the mutant language.
- If I am having a conversation with my mutant friend and he for some reason misunderstands me, the mutant thing to do is to listen to him in order to understand him even when he appears not interested in understanding me, never get angry with him for being ‘insensitive’ but rather sincerely show empathy, and sympathize sincerely with his reasons for never considering me. Again this is giving up one’s self for a friend and it is not even possible for a natural man to understand it- trust me.
I am not saying that non-mutants should not receive this kind of display of love- c’mon non-mutants are basically blind fetus in this whole thing. So we should easily overlook their wrongs because they don’t even have what it takes to lay down self for another person. What I am saying is that treating them this way is a sure thing. The basic thing they need from us is our prayers and more gene expressions within and without mutants, so they can see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. Our gene expression directly exposes them to the wonderful light of the better life. It leaves them wanting real life- Jesus the Bread of Life.
God inspired our brother Paul to write the following words in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (MSG)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “jump” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self,
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have,
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Put up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back, but keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over someday; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the complete arrived, our incompleteness will be cancelled.
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist but it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing Him directly just as He knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
If everything else including tongues and ‘Penspeak’ will end someday, and love would never die, then that is one sure language mutants will speak in heaven. Let us make our vocabulary robust today- don’t say that you have never been much of a talker. Let us start exercising the words in our ‘love’ bank today. You know we have the whole of endless eternity to speak the mutant language. Amen.
#EVERYDAYJESUS isn’t confusing
I can’t tell you how happy I am to learn that many members of your congregation are diligent in living out the Truth, exactly as commanded by the Father. But permit me a reminder, friends, and this is not a new commandment but simply a repetition of our original and basic charter: that we love each other. Love means following his commandments, and his unifying commandment is that you conduct your lives in love. This is the first thing you heard, and nothing has changed.
Don’t Walk Out on God
There are a lot of smooth-talking charlatans loose in the world who refuse to believe that Jesus Christ was truly human, a flesh-and-blood human being. Give them their true title: Deceiver! Antichrist!
And be very careful around them so you don’t lose out on what we’ve worked so diligently in together; I want you to get every reward you have coming to you. Anyone who gets so progressive in his thinking that he walks out on the teaching of Christ, walks out on God. But whoever stays with the teaching, stays faithful to both the Father and the Son.
If anyone shows up who doesn’t hold to this teaching, don’t invite him in and give him the run of the place. That would just give him a platform to perpetuate his evil ways, making you his partner.
I have a lot more things to tell you, but I’d rather not use paper and ink. I hope to be there soon in person and have a heart-to-heart talk. That will be far more satisfying to both you and me. Everyone here in your sister congregation sends greetings.
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Vision tells us WHERE we should go while purpose tells us WHY we should go
Great Mined Mind(GMM)
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No shame, no anger, nothing to prove… Only the victory of Jesus over death to enforce
-Enonche K. Enonche
