Welcome to the September 6th edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
The Story Of My Week
Writing this week's email came with a bit of difficulty
I wonder why.
Maybe it's the sense of tiredness that comes from doing the same thing for a while - it's been about two and a half years of not missing a week except once.
But I remind myself of the reason I started writing all this
I wanted to write something that would make the faith journey of the people God has given me the privilege to serve a little easier.
It was going to be with minimal filter, just me expressing my thoughts on the things I faced during the week.
And I always hope every week that you find something in it that keeps your head up
This was good enough to get me back to the writing grind
And write another one for you this week.
I hope it helps you on your life and faith walk
I hope it helps you to become better
And trust God more, believing that He is at work in your everyday life
This was my week.
Things I Learnt
1-One Decision to Rule Them: I was listening to an American pastor talk about how a decision he made with the leaders of the church, in the wake of COVID19, to not resume for services till the end of the year.
The church is on the top 5 largest churches in the USA by attendance records so it's a huge thing. Well, not all the church members took it well. A couple of them left voicemail or emails that they were leaving the church.
Well, he did something a bit unusual. He got the phone numbers of most of the people who said they were leaving and called them directly.
It took a while for the people to believe it was him on the phone when they picked his call. After the initial shock that it was him, they would go on to say how much the ministry of the church has been to them and their family including their children. One man went on to tell him how his marriage has been saved by through the man's ministry.
But because of the decision to suspend Sunday service, they would not be part of the church anymore. One man said the pastor had bowed his knees to Caesar, another said he wasn't taking a stand, and yet another said he was more concerned about been popular than calling people to repentance so they are out of the church.
It's interesting how one decision can rule over how we view a consistent life of showing Christian example.
Every decision is filtered through the eyes of politics and sadly, the church has been drawn into it.
By the way, the pastor went into details to explain during the sermon how they came to the decision.
They made the choice as the way they saw best fit to serve their community during this season. They still continued to meet in small groups and cells.
But the one decision to rule the matter was weekend services for these people
I am learning more every day that there are issues to die on and there are some that we can all get along with - if we chose to.
It is Christian charity if we live that way.
We can't let politics define our faith.
Our faith should define how we do politics.
Politics at its highest good cannot create the world that Jesus wants or bring His kingdom come.
It can make the world a little easier to live in if it can be used for good.
But the greatest good to humanity is the gospel.
And we should never make politics equal to the gospel.
The gospel rules over all.
2-Forgetting to Follow-up: I saw a video from a church I am familiar with of a new convert. Her story is that she came from a completely non-christian background and discovered one of the modern variants of eastern religion.
By God's intervention, she had found Christ and connected with the church. As I heard her story, I immediately knew what could happen.
Starting a new life with no new friends that believed what she now believed opened the possibility that she would fall back. In other words, she could backslide.
I immediately reached out to someone in the church to find out if there was someone walking with her to help ground her in the commitment she made to follow Jesus.
A lot of people fall back on their decision to follow Jesus without support in the new life
I did that
After I said yes to Jesus, I went back after I got into some conversation with younger versions of the Pharisees
I didn't come back until years later.
I am always hoping that new converts don't have to go my route.
And they stand a better chance as long as we don't forget to follow-up on them
Postscript
May God fill your heart with peace in the midst of everything and wisdom for you to make the right decision for the next level of life you need to walk in (Amen)
Tata
Tola
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