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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

FOOTPRINTS

Dear reader, hold my hand
As we take a walk through time
Time immemorial, ages immortal
Up till today, ending in tomorrow.
Starting form the stone age, through the prehistoric period
Jumping to the Renaissance, colonisations,
Zooming off to the apartheid
–have you been observing?
What do you see?
Well, I’ll tell you my observations,
I’ve seen birth, growth, happiness, laughter
Sadness, disgrace, shame, pain, mourning,
Success, achievement, death.
From age to age, millennium to millennium
The same cycle goes on, birth to death.
Hmm— pretty drab, isn’t it?
Come closer, observe, it always ends with death
But there’s something else….. Footprints
Footprints in the sands of time
Made and stamped, by humans, not aliens
Boy, do they look pretty!
Know this- footprints in the sands of time
Are not made sitting down
If you want to be recognised, remembered,
You must learn to do this simple things
Do what you love, and love what you do
That does the trick.
Yeah, with God on your side too,
Else you’ll just become another boring story.
Strive, reader, strive to leave your stamp
And dear, make it indelible.
Emm okay, less talk, Godspeed.

The Mute Cry

crying-girls-facebook-profile-pictures

I’ve been wronged. Why should I not be bitter?

Treated unfairly, as though I don’t deserve better.

Suffering consequences for choices I never made.

I’m strange not special, odd not unique, tossed apart not set apart.

Bitterness I drink, bitterness I sip.

I sleep with my oddness, wake with my strangeness and live with my bitterness.

I chose not this burden, it chose me and like a jealous wife follows me everywhere, weighing me down-spirit choking, soul gasping, body crumbling, all under this bitter weight.

How dare you demand I be bitter no more?

Roll away this load and with a light heart I’ll smile.

They point at me – jesting me, poking me, mocking me.

Bitterness, bitterness, bitterness all around and around all.

I sat there sinking in the mud hole of my anger, suffocating from my own rage, angry with life, tired of men, hidden from God.

I stood at the door beckoning the grim reaper ‘please pay me a visit’ and with open hands I would welcome him. Better dead than bitter, better entombed than enraged, life is overrated.

A knock! At last the grim reaper was here, I fumbled over myself in excitement to welcome my own death. I opened the door and He walked in instead, brighter than life and bigger than all, too magnificent to be grim, too loving to be reaper. I skidded with all my might heading the opposite direction, lest my darkness spewing heart stain even the edge of his light crusted garments. But His arms longer than the great wall and quicker than Bolt went round me and like the clenched jaws of Sabre tooth, drew me in to himself. I shuddered to look sure I would stain even the stainless and spread my cancer of bitterness on another.

He was gone, I opened my eyes to see that his glow had driven my groans and his light had shone upon my life, driving eternally away my darkness and stains. It was all gone and my heart was beating ‘free’ ‘dom’, ‘free’ ‘dom’, ‘free’ ‘dom’. I sought for my pain only to find His pleasures, I opened the wardrobe of my bitterness only to find garments of praise, my account of shame empty and my store of Joy overflowing.

Where is my knight in shining Armour? My hero who saved me from myself? I looked around to no avail, only to hear His voice from within my very heart crying ‘over here’.

This myriad of happenings all in a split second as I answered the altar call on this Sunday morning, never uttering a word, with folks I never knew but who now felt closer than kin. Kneeling on the altar, live tears streaming from my eyes, once bitter, once angry, now saved, now changed, all because His ears hear even the mute cries of a bitter heart.

rejoicing-woman-2

#EVERYDAYJESUS’ mutants express!

Gene expression is simply fruit bearing

Man is a spirit with a soul that lives in a body. The mutation (rebirth) of the spirit produces a perfect spirit. We receive the truths about the Word in our spirits. Our spirits live forever and is perfect because of the Gene of God- the Holy Spirit.

Our soul houses the mind, the will, and the emotions. Our minds sum up our psychological make-ups which is directly affected by our environment. The mind receives impulse from the environment by the means of the physical senses (things we see, heard over time, and probably felt).our mind (i.e. the way we see, react to things, our experiences) determine how the Father’s Gene is expressed in us.

The Mutation did not erase the spirit (entire DNA) of the mutant, which was why Paul wrote to mutants in Galatia this way:

Galatians 5:16-18: My counsel is this: live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence? (MSG)

The mutant still has his soul i.e. his mind, will, and emotions intact. Those, especially the mind constitute what you may choose to refer to as flesh in man. However the soul of this mutant enables him to express the Ultimate Gene. (Let’s hold it here)

Bearing fruit is by faith. We don’t have faith because we have the Ultimate gene, rather we have the Ultimate Gene because we have faith. In the same way, we express the Ultimate Gene by faith- little wonder why faith is not a component of the fruit of the Spirit or let’s say the expressions of the Spirit.

We continue to renew the mind till we consummate with Lord because before and after mutation, our mind picks up things that makes it not to have the faith required for by Spirit (the Ultimate Gene). We must always remember that the mind is the part of us that relates directly with the physical or sense realm just as the rest of the spirit has direct access to the Mind of God (that is by the way). We therefore renew our minds by the written Word of God, so that by looking at the Word (which the Bible calls mirror,) our minds constantly sees the lion that the mutant spirit is instead of the kitten that the mind has been subjected to become as a result of environmental conditionings. Remember that in natural terms, environmental conditionings such as food quality, generally affect the natural gene expression.

If faith comes from hearing, hearing of the Word of God, then we have need to renew our little minds so that that the faith needed to lay hold of the big people we are can come. In other words, we have to renew the mind so that the faith needed to express the Spirit Gene will come.

I will explain something here (scripturally) how expression is by faith.

John 15: 5-6 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he like a branch that is thrown away withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned” NIV

So how do I remain in the vine so that I can bear fruit, and what is that fruit?

Let’s start with what the fruit is. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”- Galatians 5:22-23b. Note that faith is not part of the list of the component of that fruit. (Please do not, or let anyone ‘con’ you into believing that your fruit is/ are the souls you have won for the lord- you can search your Bible to be sure of that)

So how do I remain in the vine (Jesus) so that I can bear the fruit, since fruit bearing is a function of remaining?

Romans 11: 16-21 “if the part of the dough offered as first fruit is holy, then the whole batch is holy, if the root is holy, so are the branches( Paul was telling the Christians in Rome about Israel, you may read up the preliminary chapters/or verses for yourself)… if some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot have been grafted in among others, and now share in the nourishing sap from the roots, do not boast over those branches……. But they were broken off because of unbelief and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant because if God did not spare the natural branches (Israel because of unbelief), He will not spare you either (mutants in Rome).

Now by the true witnesses of John 15, Galatians 5, and Romans 11, we may establish that fruit bearing or gene expression is by faith.

Now why Gene expression?

The loving God relates to the non-mutated world through His mutants- His salts, and lights around. This is the mutant invasion!

Back to John 15 “this is my father’s glory (the father now the mutant daddy) that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”- John 15:8. In other words, “this is to our father’s glory that you mutants bear much fruit (express the Gene) showing the non-mutated that you are my mutants. (My version so unauthorized)

Now also back to human genetic engineering, the reason for every genetic manipulation is simply for industrial (mass) purpose. E.coli (bacteria mutant) expresses insulin so that diabetic people can use it chemotherapeutically.

“You are the salt of the EARTH. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the WORLD. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to EVERYONE in the house. In the same way, let your light so shine before MEN, that THEY may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. – Matthew 5:13-16 (NIV). This was Jesus talking to mutants in the making.

Furthermore, creation the Bible says, waits in expectation for the manifestation of the sons of God. That is to say that the world is waiting for mutants to express the Spirit Gene.

But why?

So that they can survive. So that the food does not putrefy or so that the food can have some taste. So that there will be light in the room. The world is blind from thick darkness. The world is really a dark place and the non-mutated cannot see but mutants operate from the Kingdom of Light, our Goshen, our Canaan, and Eden on earth. And guess what, it is a faith thing to operate from this Kingdom!