Welcome to the August 15th 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
Dr Alicia Britt Chole (Dr ABC for short) is one of the people I respect a lot.
She said something a few weeks back.
Her words "Honesty is a friend of intimacy with God."
It was the tonic I needed to restart journaling my thoughts to God.
This was something I did seamlessly in the early days of my walk with God.
From there, I even wrote songs.
I lost that in the busyness that life threw at me.
It was great to rediscover it again and pursue it.
Intimacy with God has been the cornerstone of my spiritual journey.
It's the core and center of everything I do.
And I want my life to always tell that story.
Things I Learnt
1-Always Give Respect: I met up with someone this week with whom we had had a similar event in our careers.
At some point in time, he was posted to a new country with a culture different from where he came from. Something I had also experienced.
I told him my transition went very well because the people I worked with were good and responded well when I gave them respect.
From the moment I got there, I was committed to showing them that they had my respect. And they reciprocated by working well with me.
The guy I met said he didn't learn that lesson early enough.
He showed up like the new sheriff in town - and they raised riot for him.
He said things got better after he started giving respect to them. He said he wished he had learnt that when he first started.
I can feel him.
I am lucky I had the opportunity to learn early in life the high currency that respect carries.
Respect is a valuable bridge builder.
You don't loose by giving it.
You thrive better when you learn to give it first.
2-When the World Changes our Behaviour: Someone got onto a social media post I made this week. He seemed poised for looking for an argument.
The only problem is that I had learned that there is no use in going into a conversation where there was nothing to be gained.
I have been in conversations with who don't agree with me and who still end up not agreeing with me at the end of the conversation.
But we all leave the conversation having heard the other person's perspective.
This guy had no intention of doing that. He was just looking for a platform to vent out issues he had.
Even though I side-stepped his challenge for getting into an argument, I read everything he wrote.
A lot of what he wrote about Christianity (he is not a Christian yet he was commenting on Christian themed post I made) seemed to come from hearsay.
Sadly, it's these hearsay that have now conditioned how most of us as Christians live our lives.
For example, because the world complains that we are not doing enough to meet the needs of the poor, every time we do something, we call the press to broadcast it or get onto social media.
We forget that Jesus expects us to shine our light on the poor and let the poor glorify God while telling others about what we did for them.
We did a flip - we shine our light on the poor and call others to see what we are doing for the poor so that they can see we are doing something.
And it all began when the world started telling us how we should shine our light.
Because they decided how we should behave based on hearsay.
I want my life to be like God has marked out in the Bible.
I want Jesus to say "I see traces how I want to live in you."
Postscript
May your eyes be opened to see how the favor of God is keeping you amid difficult circumstances. And may this give you the courage to go out and create the kind of change in the world that makes God happy. Amen
Tata,
Tola - The Everyday Disciple
I help Christians like you who want to live intentional lives incorporate their faith into everyday life so they can make Christ focused decisions in all areas of life and truly live to make an impact and make God happy.
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