Welcome to the August 16th 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
The events of this week once again reaffirmed a faith principle that I developed after how I have seen God at work in my life over the years.
A few weeks back, I got some piece of information that would create a new transition for me and my family.
Well, we got down to planning how adjusting to the transition would mean. Until we got stuck.
We reached a wall that we couldn't push through.
I made a decision.
I will leave everything till when I have to face the transition. I couldn't plan a solution now for the wall so I decided to wait till when I have to face the wall. No need to worry about tomorrow's problems today if I don't have the answer and ruin my today with tomorrow's worries.
But I have a bigger reason.
I came to the conclusion long ago that God is more concerned about me than I could be concerned about myself. This has given me the calmness to leave tomorrow's problems in tomorrow when I don't have answers today because I know God will take care of them.
As it happens, this week, we got another piece of information that has put the family on another transition path completely different from the first one.
Imagine if we had spent all that time worrying over something that isn't happening again.
Well, we are treating this new transition differently
We are leaving tomorrow's worries in tomorrow and facing only the questions we have to answer for today
God has tomorrow under control
Tomorrow’s worry tomorrow not today
Things I Learnt
1-Faith Principles for Living: For the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to messages focused on growing up my faith. For about 3 weeks, I listened to only one bible teacher's sermons that my wife said she was going to write and tell him about how much of his messages I listened to.
This week, I started through the teachings of the late Kenneth E. Hagin. In case you are not very familiar with him, I think of him more as a teacher-prophet.
In one of his sermons, he reignited something I embraced a while back. It's the fact that a long life for a Christian starts with embracing bible-based principles. He preached on the necessity of embracing faith principles ahead of health practices.
In the example he used, he talked about a man who was into his eighties. The man told him that one of the faith principles he had embraced as a foundation for living a long life was this
Does anyone want to live a life that is long and prosperous? Then keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies! Psalm 34:12,13
Kenneth E. Hagin said he saw the man live this out in practice. A man in the town he lived had died. Most people in the town considered it good riddance to bad rubbish. When this was told to the man, he simply remarked "he had beautiful eyes". This was how he was committed to "keeping his tongue from speaking evil"
I picked that point as a faith principle to live by to have a long and prosperous life.
Another that I have lived by is this "Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you". Exodus 20:12.
These faith principles rank higher than any health practices I may have.
Yes, I try to eat right and take regular walks as part of my health practices. But they rank lower in my belief system of why I will live a full life.
I place my faith principles about my health practices
But I don't ignore my health practices
2-Not every opinion must be shared: One of the things I fight myself from succumbing to is the pressure from social media to always respond to every argument I disagree with.
I often have to reteach myself that my time is valuable and I need to place importance on addressing the point that adds the most value per time.
On a WhatsApp group, I am in which is made up of Christians. A Christian leader in the group blurted out that God had no hand in the creation of Nigeria as a country.
The fault or glory of that hangs primarily with the British colonialists, in particular Lord Lugard. Therefore, the problems of the mismatch of cultural thinking by the various tribes joined to become Nigeria come from them.
His angst came from a recent event in the Northern part of Nigeria, dominated by a Muslim majority, where a musician was sentenced to death for blasphemy.
I knew immediately this was wrong and I was going to fire a response. But I felt a nudge in me, I was not meant to respond.
I understood later why I didn't need to respond
Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” Ps 14:1a.
Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are. Be sure to answer the foolish arguments of fools, or they will become wise in their own estimation.- Proverbs 26:4,5
The last part of the text I quoted in Proverbs reminded me that I needed to raise the level of the conversation. Unless people understand the power of God better, it would be foolish to have a conversation on the matter.
And that is what I need to bring into the conversation
I need to show him and anybody else in his boat how God displays His power. Unless they see God's power, everything else is mute.
It's like the example of Jesus and the Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They asked him about a woman married to 7 brothers and who she would be married to at the resurrection.
Jesus said the conversation was mute because they "don’t know the Scriptures, and the power of God" (Matt 22:29). He then proceeded to show them both.
I hope I can achieve that when I put my response together
Postscript
The fool says in his heart "there is no God."
May you not become foolish enough to be too focused on the principles and practices of success that you forget that it is God that blesses efforts with success (Amen)
Tata,
--
Tola Akinsulire
Blogger, Tolawrites.com
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