GET YOURSELF THE CROC!

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019Leave a comment

Croc bags have been brought to my notice and girl, they are oh so expensive; they don’t even look fancy. You won’t believe that such a plain Jane of a bag would cost over $150,000. I understand that there are budget crocs but I am really speaking of the premium ones, the crocs for those who set the trends.

But why is there such a fuss about crocs?

Crocs are a fashion staple, bags made from pure crocodile hide.

I am writing about croc bags because I want to get down to something about crocodiles. Crocodile hides are highly durable fashion pieces. Anything put in a croc is really safe from pocket pickers; a blade would have a hard time getting through. Anything you put in there is good to go, in the rain and in the sun.

Now let’s get to the nitty-gritty of this talk:

Genesis 15 vs 1b;

“…Fear not: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward”- KJV.

So, how has that got to do with crocs?

Good question. Let me amplify with Strong’s concordance:

…Relax: I am your crocodile scaly hide of covering from the world’s worst and your extremely huge net worth; you have me, I am more than enough.

See? God knows how important we all need crocs, boys and girls alike. For Abraham and for anyone else who wants to appropriate that scripture into his life, Yahweh God of Israel is willing to be your croc.

Allow yourself to be a tiny little piece of fur hidden away in the right croc. I believe you know who the right Croc is.

© Favour Omeje, 2019

EVERYDAY JESUS FAITH SERIES (PART TWO)

May 15, 2019May 15, 2019Leave a comment

First, I would like to say that faith is a stand you are willing to take because you believe. Faith is a stand. I would also like to tell you that such a stand is worship. It is worship because worship is yielding to the voice of God. The Bible says:

“But without faith, it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him”.

Let me put this in my own words:

But without faith, it is impossible to entirely satisfy God because anyone that wants to worship God must believe that He exists and that He never misleads or disappoints them that act on the fact that He exists, those ones who listen to Him.

However, there are times when you’d be acting on the Word of God and His instruction and it would look as though you were silly or you find yourself beginning to doubt its authority. You might even be angry and offended in your spirit.

Let me show you how I have learned to stand by faith in the worship of the spirit God, Psalms 4 vs 4 & 5:

“Stand in awe, and sin not:

Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD”- KJV.

In other words,

“Be angry, and do not sin;

Ponder in your hearts on your beds, and be silent, offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD”. ESV.

The right sacrifice is a stand of faith. Worship is trusting in the truth of God with one’s heart no matter what happens.

P.S. allow yourself some sleep if you have to, you’d feel better when you wake up.

©Favour Omeje

EVERYDAY JESUS FAITH SERIES (PART 1)

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019Leave a comment

On the 27th day of January, the Lord impressed it on my heart to delve into the book of Psalms- he was preparing me for something. I was already studying the Bible beginning from the Torah and believe me, I was mining gold from it.

The thought of getting to the book of Psalms was electrifying, to say the least. The Bible says that the entrance (unfolding) of the Word is light and gives understanding to the simple. I knew that I was someone who most people would describe as plain and easy to understand- not like I wanted to be complicated and mysterious. I was excited about the Word which I had been studying more this year to make me shrewdly prudent in my dealings.

God does not want us to be simple. A simple man is someone who is open-minded towards people and things. The only thing we should be open-minded about is the Word and the only one we should be open-minded towards, is the Spirit of Christ and He is found in the hearts of believers; never doubt him.

So without further ado, Psalms 1 vs 1:

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful”. KJV.

I love how Strong’s Concordance renders his verse:

You will be happy if you don’t follow the advice and the prudence of the world, nor become grounded in the approach to life of the guilty (those who have not accepted the love of the Father), nor marry the ideas of the unbelieving, the faithless.

Before I go ahead to summarize this translation of mine, I’d like to say a few things:

The people of the world have a form of wisdom. They are careful about certain things. If you want to be happy, do not be like them. Be neither careful nor careless, but be free from the grip of cares.
Those who live in guilt of both the things they did and the ones that they didn’t do have an approach to life unique to them, one of which is that they try so hard to impress God resulting in constant fear of both the known and unknown. You are already in the love of the Father, so do not stoop so low to be like them.
The unbelieving and the faithless have ideas and logic that may seem sound. But they will leave you drained. They trust their senses, the things that the eyes can see and the mind can comprehend, and they mock and ridicule you if you act and speak on the impulse of the Spirit. They make fun of you and tease you, saying that your decisions are silly. Some of them may be in the church; they pray as you do and fast too but would shun you if you ever say that God told you a thing. They’d tell you to prove it. Do not be like that because the just shall live by faith.

Finally dear saint, you will be happy if you walk in love, stand by faith and sit in the unshakable authority of heavenly places, in God’s presence.

©Favour Omeje

I HATE COOL AND SWEET

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019Leave a comment

For some reason, I detest cool, sweet, and smooth. Here’s why: when they settle too long, they become lukewarm, sour, and ugly. They stink. They turn worthless.

Then they become poison.

I would rather carry live flames in my arms. I’d rather they burn and sear my delicate skin and roast my plump flesh to ashes.

I crave the blood to soak my bruised face, that front of handsomeness that assures me falsely, that flimsy foundation of confidence. I would give everything to be on fire, to be a lamp, a candle’s burning thread, consumed to give light to a world being killed by sweetness, sweetness of the kind that rots the soul.

My fear isn’t for the fire that sinks my swag and shatters my claims on being ‘cool’. What I do fear is the inferno of coolness itself, the molten dissolution the world considers sugary, the fraud that embraces the tongue with caramel lather, only to steal its sense of taste.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that love is sweet. It isn’t. It isn’t bitter either. Love’s very presence renders taste secondary. The stronger it is, the less interested we are in what is does to our taste buds- whether it makes them tremble with excitement, shudder in awe, or retreat in terror.

When we are so far gone in love, it is Love itself- not its sweetness or sharpness -that consumes our being.

When you think that love can only be sugary, you will believe that reproof and compassion do not belong together. You will believe that a loving God could never damn a sinner to eternal torment. You will be alright with replacing the one true God with a sky dwelling grand-daddy figure too cowardly to correct the wrongdoings of his grandchildren.

When you think that love is only hugs and kisses, without rules or toughness, you will more easily wander off into dangerous openness, that vast but counterfeit ‘freedom’ called hell, the eternal coldness which lies at the end of all pursuit of crowd-pleasing ‘coolness’ for the sake of it.

We can reach beyond shallow sweetness to take hold of the exhilarating, all-consuming roller coaster of intense joy and deep-cutting anguish that true living brings us. That’s because in the midst of it all we are sure that a God who loves us fiercely will give His own life to preserve ours. Even if it means snatching us from the flames of cool with some degree of compassionate force.

©Ikenna Nwachukwu

Let these lines stand proof i said it

May 3, 2019May 8, 2019Leave a comment

I will script beauty on tomorrow’s face
I will forge next year into my productivity phase
But just in case I forget to remember to begin
Let these lines stand proof I said it

Time and tide twiddle thumbs
Idly laying languid lessons
We grow and lose our best selves, on our journey to finding us.
Let these lines stand proof I said it

Bet. Everything will make it known. Even
Birds. Twi-twi-twitting, heralding the coming
Birth. Pangs only last the night, no more room to
Let. These lines stand proof I said it

For so long I died to dine with him
For a taste of life and love I sat with him
I rose from that table thorn free
Let these lines stand proof I said it

Such will be history’s song
The stories we paint with every heartbeat
To live to love to give to all
Let these lines stand proof I said it

An army that wins with no casualties
Floating on faith through a storm of uncertainties
Many sick healed would be our reality
Let these lines stand proof I said it

A month is surely time enough
With all five fingers put to work
May it be the one that fulfils it
Let these lines stand proof I said it

Fry-day

April 26, 2019May 8, 2019Leave a comment

Last night, i got laid
Doubt came to me in my dreams
And had an intercourse with my mind
I am five months gone
Carrying these thoughts around
Hoping to abort this abomination
So, let me break open my insecurities
Hoping to make an omelet
Because today is fry-day

Shots fired
Fear has breathed its last
I am shut fire
Ready to explode at last
This is suicide
I die to rise, call it Easter
Fear skews sight
Jesus fixed it, Bethsaida

I love a meal of eggs,
Egg-xactly omelets.
The way we can whisk two together or maybe more,
Like the intercourse of minds, like the grind of spirits.
And isn’t beautiful, the wet and slip of waters, the freshness like a new day, the way it all becomes familiar and new?
As we sit at tables set before enemies ,
Fellowshipping with sips of living tea and chewing bread alive, making alive,
That the omelet served is faith, the abortion to every doubt.
Isn’t it beautiful, the sparks that fly as iron sharpens iron, and ideas are born for the time they arrive?
Don’t you just love a meal of omelets?

#Fry-day
#FreestlyeFriday

What Faith Wears

March 19, 2019April 6, 2019Leave a comment

Faith wears
Knowledge as an anklet, a jungle boot
Saves your thorn trudging soles
And lights your thistle-bush swamped soul
With glints, glimpses of rays
From the Heavens

Then faith wears
You out
Makes you see yourself as a lion
Starving in the jungle, mocked
By an abundance that attacks your tongue
A world wrestling to claim your eyes

Faith offers you sight
Makes you lay down in green pastures
To be killed, to die, and die again
As you preach peace
In a world where wild fights
Fill the heart with joy

Chukwu Simeon Chidiebere

CHRONICLES OF A DROWNING MIND

March 10, 2019August 19, 2019Leave a comment

Dead zone
Broken soul
Scary shadows
Those are rhythms of a poor old kid
Whose ways never pleased anyone, not even herself.

No hope
Buried grace
Weak for the race
Those are top list words recorded in the word billboard of her mind
She used to be of the royal line
But now goodness turned to lime
She sees God’s intentions as the least
Her faith so rusty and loosen like an abandoned screw
There she becomes a beast that feast with the devil.

Records of heart failures
Impotent to believe the best inside
Drenched with the thoughts of discovery
Draining in the memory lane of no understanding
Tears from the sole of the heart dripping down like flood yet none sees these flood of questions buried in tears

Travelling alone in travail… I weep in smiles…
Because in my green days have I grown grey because am yet to discover the me in me

In silenced smiles I’m drown in fears because my mind has become aged in thoughts

Hold my weeping mind
Embrace my tears in warmth,
Caress me with words of rescue
Carry me in the wings of warmth understanding
For I drown in silence

Oh…save me from this destiny device
For I transit into the groove of eternity
My powerhouse drowns
I plead for restoration if that exist
I seek for redemption for this battle is beyond me