I CAN'T LIVE A LIFE WITH THIS WAY OF THINKING

1:26PM
WEDNESDAY

Over the past couple of days, I have picked up my notebook to prepare an entry a time or two. All to no avail. There was a particular time I came up with something but just simply discarded it. Not that it wasn't good enough, but it wasn't just the state of my heart at the moment.

FAST CARS
I'm in this place where lots of dreams of the future are popping up. It's a good thing i tell you. But what gets me off track most time is when I just try to fend for my self, take care of myself and have it all calculated. I forget the Giver of the dream and chase the dream. It's life draining and time wasting. As christians, the God we serve calls us to a place of surrender, a place to lay down our burdens and rest in him but it's amazing how most times we just want to sort it all out ourselves. Personally, I have discovered that it's the laziness to cast hope on a God we cannot see to do things we can see for us that gets us on the quest to fend for ourselves. 'wait for God' my heart whispers to me mostly in my moments of decision but I just tell myself ' I can go ahead and have it all right now'. The trick is we think we do our hearts a favor by keeping it from expecting for God to happen, the truth is we do ourselves more harm cause any journey without God utterly ends up in disappointment and despair. We are crushed, angry and disappointed. We have placed our hopes in things that wouldn't satisfy us if we stuck to them from now to eternity. What are you talking about exactly I can hear you ask.
Every sin is rooted in trying to take a fast path to a place of fulfillment. For example, a father looking for self fulfillment takes up a career and pours himself into it even at the expense of his family. He forgets the fact that it's in Christ we find our true self. He says he is a Christian all right, (at least he goes to church on Sundays and during the week sometimes if he is chanced). Ask him how he forgot such a vital truth about finding one's real self and decided to look for it in a career. He might say something like this ' I waited on my knees but nothing seemed to be coming forth. It seemed I was losing the part of me I had instead of finding the me I didn't know. The career seemed more promising. I could work so hard and people would say look at him he works so hard'. We rather jump on our fast cars promising to take us to our destinations than wait for God to lead us there. The destination we get to with our fast cars isn't always what we had in mind when we started the journey but by the time we finally realize the damage is done.
A young man settles for sex before marriage and other perversions, thereby fulfilling a God given dream or desire by jumping on board of the fast cars the world offers. He fulfills a legitimate desire in an illegitimate way . The search for pleasure has kept some in the fast cars of alcohol, one night stands, masturbation and even the lesser and more subtle devils of obsession with media, hard work, fashion, religion and even church service.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS
A scripture comes to mind. Jesus standing in the temple in Jerusalem. Note, he isn't standing in a red light districts filled with prostitutes nor in a wild club where people are having party orgies. He stands in a temple filled with religious men and woman and also maybe just maybe a lady who had just visited our wild club and bringing a sacrifice to atone for her sins. It's in the midst of a place like this and during a ceremony ( which would even bring more people to the temple) that He calls out ' if anyone thirsts let him come and drink'. It's amazing that Jesus promises a drink, something that would satisfy our thirst yet we try to quench them with things that only make us more thirsty after a bit of ecstasy. Jesus in a different scenario promises a woman from Samaria who had had more than five sexual partners before meeting Jesus that if she took a drink from Him, she would never thirst again. God calls us with the traffic lights we see while we are in our fast cars, "drink from this water and you never thirst again". With the promise of our fast cars we hop along, one more try, one more shot, one more time and we would arrive. Sometimes he stops us right in our tracks with the red lights of that heart break, that disappointment we experience when we put all trust in other people hoping they would come through for us. Our God is indeed merciful

I CAN'T LIVE A LIFE WITH THIS WAY OF THINKING
Paul uses a word in the holy book that makes us all turn our heads by calling the galatians 'foolish'. He then asked then who has bewitched them?. Do they think the journey they started in Christ (by his Spirit) can be completed in the arm of the flesh? I have seen Christians having a good laugh at this scripture found in Galatians 3:1-4, but if they only knew, if we only knew that God was speaking to us in these couple of verses we might just rethink our lives. Really who has bewitched us? We know who but we just live our lives like he doesn't exist. We mimic him in our movies with a red puppet holding a fork and grinning. If we only knew. If we only knew the anger with which he is angry with God. If we only knew how much he longs to destroy God's beloved ( that is us) body, soul and spirit in order to get back at God. If we only knew he is nothing like the red puppet with a long tail holding a fork that we think him to be. If we only knew he somethings manifest as an angel of light. If we only knew what Dante saw when he said that the prince of darkness is a gentleman. If we only knew.
I'm not saying all this to scare us back to our closet and develop a sort of agoraphobia or go in search of holy water to sprinkle on you and all your belongings. Like I said when i began this entry, I have seen the devil trying to get at me from all sorts of angles in life. His plan- to kill, steal and to destroy. His strategy - by telling us over and over again ( through various avenue) like he did in Eden that our God would fail us if we trust him with our desires.
This morning I heard myself whispering to myself ' God, are you there'. He has already said in his word that he will never leave us nor forsake us. Life circumstances have made me doubt that over time. An evidence came from my speech by asking the question if he was there is morning. But to live life with doubt, like James says in the bible is to be like a ship in the open seas tossed to and fro. We can't live a life with this way of thinking. We are headed to be unstable and incoherent if we try to. As a man thinks so he is, our thoughts become our actions and we end up living our lives 180 degrees from what we 'say' we believe and the world starts to wonder what In the world is wrong with us

WHAT IF WE WERE REAL?
What if we were real? What if we live the life we've been called to live as lovers of God. Drawing near to his heart with every daily step
The importance of knowing the plan of the enemy isn't to draw us into a kind of fear of him, it's to draw us to the one who alone is able to save us from his wiles. 'Draw near to me' God calls in James ' and I will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded'. Isn't it interesting that our faith ( being sure in our hearts of the things being promised by God of which we are earnestly also expecting) is the channel by which we fall in love with God more. Faith works by love. Faith is the substance of things 'hoped' for. There's no faith without hope. Faith, hope and love.
Our quest as Christians is to fall deeper in love with God by drawing nearer . Seeking him through prayer ( which simply means COMMUNICATING with God. . The psalms are a good place to start if you are wondering how, but bear in mind, just be real cause God knows what's in your heart before you speak), through his written word ( the bible, we should note that it's through the written word we get the revealed word and they never contradict) and meditating on His word (that's how it sticks in a world were everything seems to move so fast). A journey of a thousand miles starts with a step and as Christians we do not journey alone. As we carry our cross, God carries us. As we fall in love with God and draw nearer, what we do is punch the devil in the face.

SLOW DOWN TIME
For me I believe God is calling me to place to just wait on him and seek his face. God can do is a truth we often forget. He is powerful. There's no dream he has put in our hearts that he can't bring to pass. With man some things are impossible but with God all things are possible.
I was with a friend yesterday day and a word he said still keeps ringing in my head. 'we have a great destiny before us and the devil knows it and he's out there to make sure we don't fulfill it at all cost'. Let me encourage you friends, the greater the trials and temptations, the greater our God given destiny. It's high time we wait on God for the strength we need to live life. ' They that wait on the Lord' the prophet Isaiah proclaims 'shall be renewed, they shall walk and not be weary. They shall run and would not faint'. This is a call to us as Christians. Our hour of temptations should be an avenue to please God thereby breaking the devil's heart. Our times of trials, an opportunity to lift up the name of Jesus by raising a God-song in that valley where it seems God is absent, thereby hitting the devil in the butt. How do we get the strength to stand the times of trials and temptation. We don't have to stand if we are on our knees before the King of kings. The answer is like I said, seeking God.
As I close this entry and thinking of a joke to share in the end, I'm geared to live life on a new level. It's time to step out on the stormy seas but this time with Jesus, our source who we must be relevant to at all times. It's slow down time guys.

WE COULD STILL USE A CHRISTMAS JOKE
I once heard of a boy who was allergic to peas and just didn't like the idea of heaven. One day his teacher in Sunday school asked him why. 'I just can't stand heaven cause I know there are a lot of peas there' he replied. ' what gives you that idea?' the teacher asked. ' Don't you know the line of that Christmas song called Silent night that goes 'sleep in heavenly peas''. The teacher was just too shocked to correct that it was 'peace' not 'peas'.
Guys till next time. I'm expecting the new year, I hope you are too. Merry Christmas still. Bye for now. Your boy the King's Son. Always remember
U R LUVED :)

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