Author: Gloryyah

Our hope

Yesterday, I was reminded about the enormity of God’s love for us….for me.

As we sang and cried out, “Holy, holy”, I marvelled at how such a holy God who dwells in unapproachable light and who clothes Himself with light loves us so much that He did all He could to make it possible for us to come close to Him. What indescribable love!

That wasn’t enough, apparently. The Holy Spirit wanted to make it really sink in so an old song by Amy Grant was sung – ‘In a little while’. The chorus goes thus:

In a little while, we’ll be with the Father
Can’t you see Him smile?
In a little while we’ll be home forever
In a while
We’re just here to learn to love Him
We’ll be home in just a little while

“Can’t you see Him smile?”…..

Broken, yet whole

Hi.

It’s that time of the year again.

It’s time for Alabaster Box 2019.

Living without the worry of money

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”(Psalm 23:1, NKJV)

I can’t speak for the multi-millionaires, but generally speaking, I don’t think anybody is immune to the worry of money. There are those times when money is running out way before your next salary or business income is due; or when there is a need greater that what you can afford, especially if it’s a dire need with a deadline. The natural reaction is to worry about it. Sleep goes out of the window and the wheels in the brain start working overtime trying to find a solution……trying to answer the question: “How can I get some money now?” Money is the unit of exchange on this side of Heaven, so the more we have of it the better off we are. Right? Wrong!

I guess the bigger question is: Is it really about (having) money or about having our needs met?

Who Owes Who?

There seems to be a general mindset among some Christians that because we have ‘given our lives to Christ’, He owes us. And what does He owe us? Well, every desire of our heart, of course! It is a sense of entitlement that needs to be addressed.

Let’s be honest. What is the one thing we all are entitled to?

That’s right…. death. Why?

“For the wages of sin is death,….” (Romans 6:23)

Yet Somebody died in our place so we could have life and that more abundantly. It would seem to me, then, that we are the ones who owe God. Even in instances where a human being saves another from death by jumping into the street to knock them out of harm’s way or rescuing them from a burning house or vehicle, the one who was saved feels eternally grateful and at the service of the saviour. How much more should we feel eternally grateful and eternally at the service of Christ who saved us from death both here and hereafter.

Undercover Agents

A lot of us have watched movies about spies (also known as undercover agents). A spy is a person employed by a government or other organization to secretly obtain information on an enemy or competitor. So they have their mission and in order to carry it out, they take on an identity which they live out such that nobody they relate with knows they are spies. They blend in with other people, working a normal job, with a family….on the outside, your everyday folks but in reality, something else.

It occurred to me one day that we are like undercover agents. We belong to families, go through the different phases of life here on Earth, perhaps marry and perhaps have children, get jobs or run businesses, etc. but underneath it all, we are on a mission. All the things I just enumerated are done as we blend in because we are IN the world but it behoves us to keep our focus on our mission and not get caught up with these things because we are not OF the world.

God’s Solution for Nigeria

In this election season in Nigeria, if there is one verse I have heard quoted a lot, it is

“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
(2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV)

I sat down to look at this verse properly and I thought to share my thoughts on it in the hope that we will actually do what God would have us do to get the results we all seem to want – change in our country.

Ascribing Worth

Every object has it’s intrinsic worth/value. However, it will be ascribed a different value by different people. To a poor child in the slums where the football they play with is made of rolled up paper, a real, rubber ball would be of immense worth. Yet that same ball would be regarded as nothing by a child who has all manner of toys as his heart desires. None of this changes the ball’s intrinsic worth (or market value).

In thinking about how we ascribe worth/value, I was able to come up with the following:

1. Value ascribed because of scarcity:

To Follow Thee More Nearly

As I shared in an earlier blog, my prayer for 2019 is expressed simply in this song:

Day by day, dear Lord of Thee
Three things I pray:
To see Thee more clearly,
To love Thee more dearly,
To follow Thee more nearly,
Day by day.

I have tried to expound on what these three phrases mean to me in three different blogs. If you haven’t already, please read the first two parts – ‘To see Thee more clearly’ and ‘To love Thee more dearly’. The third is –

To follow You more nearly:

The only way to be a true disciple of Christ is to follow Him.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
(John 10:27 NIV)

Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me…. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
(Matthew 10:38; 16:24 NIV)

To Love Thee More Dearly

As I shared in an earlier blog, my prayer for 2019 is expressed simply in this song:

Day by day, dear Lord of Thee
Three things I pray:
To see Thee more clearly,
To love Thee more dearly,
To follow Thee more nearly,
Day by day.

I will try to expound on what these three phrases mean to me in three different blogs. The first, ‘To see Thee more clearly’ can be read here. The second is –

To love Thee more dearly:

The picture a lot of us have of God does not allow for a love relationship with Him. We can’t imagine God desiring love from us even if we are able to accept that He loves us. It’s easier for us to think that all He wants from us is obedience to His many rules. Yet even the Old Testament shows God’s heart towards mankind and His desire for His love for us to be reciprocated. All the over Deuteronomy, you find verses similar to these ones:

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