GIVE THE WORD ITS PLACE

Hi,

Glad you’re here! Did you have a great time at Christmas? My husband and I went up to his parents, they had a couple of inches of snow, and it was a white Christmas indeed! I had fun, I hope you did too.

One of the highlights of my Christmas was listening to the kids tell me all about their Christmas presents, especially what they received from Santa, the excitement in their voice filled my heart with joy. To them when they hear Christmas, they think Santa, and when you mention Santa, gifts pop up in their mind. It’s amazing how the mention of certain names automatically suggests specific things to us, things associated with the name mentioned e.g. if I say Ibuprofen, you’d think painkiller, if I said milk, you may think food or protein, if I say immunization, you’d think protection, and if I said business, you may think money. Why is this so? It is because things and people are remembered by their mission, either for the problem they created or helped solve.

How about if I say ‘the WORD of God’, what pops up in your mind? Can I guess? Among your list may include – the Bible, Jesus Christ, church services, a preacher or conviction. You will be right to think any or all of these because they can all be linked to the WORD of God. However, the ministry of the WORD goes beyond what I have listed above. The WORD is given to us to minister to our daily needs, whatever they may be.

If you need guidance, the WORD is given to be a lamp to your feet and a light for your path (Psalm 119:105).
If you are weary, you can find rest in the WORD (Matthew 11:28).
If your soul is thirsty, the WORD is given to satisfy your thirst and refresh you (John 7:37).
If you are sick, the WORD is given to heal you (Psalm 107:20).
If you want a divine health insurance, you can get it in the WORD (Proverbs 4:20-22).
If you desire to be free from the yoke and burdens of addiction, in the WORD is a burden removing and yoke destroying anointing (Isaiah 10:27) KJV.
If you desire success, the WORD is given to direct you into good success (Joshua 1:8).

To partake of the above benefits, you need to recognize and accept the WORD for what it is and does, then abide in the WORD long enough for it to abide in you (John 15:4). This can be likened to dying a fabric; you have to leave that fabric long enough in the dye solution for it to set in. While still setting in, allow the abiding word to renew your mind, the result will be a transformation. Achieving this will require determination and self discipline, to study and practice the WORD until it takes root in your life. Anything that takes root downward in your life will bear fruit upward (2Kings 19:20), that is why the Bible instructs us to guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it proceeds the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). Therefore be careful that it is the WORD not the world, taking root in your life.

From the time you allow the WORD for your situation to take root in your life, you can ask for whatever you desire concerning that situation, Jesus promises that your desire will be granted (John15:7)

We are less than 48 hours into the New Year, a time when most people make their New Year’s resolutions. Some people have quit making resolutions because they are yet to keep the ones they made several years ago. If you resolve to give the WORD its rightful place in your heart from this day onward, I guarantee you will need less effort to keep every resolution you make.

A good starting point will be to increase the dosage of the word you take in daily. I’m glad to inform you that the one medicine you can never overdose on is the WORD. If you dare to feed your spirit way more than you feed your flesh all through this New Year, you will be shocked at the degree to which every area of your life will be transformed.

As we enter the New Year, I want to challenge you to give the WORD its place in your life; it is the best high yielding investment you can make on yourself, its dividends transcends time, they are everlasting.

There are no insignificant details in the bible; there is a word for every kind of situation you will ever face in life, so give the WORD its place in your life, why deny yourself of the abundant life? You have nothing to loose if you try, but there is more than you can imagine to be gained!

Go on! Give it a shot! The WORD still works!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

With Love,
Angela.

SHARE THE FUN!

Hi Friend!

Thanks for being here again. How is everything going for you? Are you all set for Christmas? For me, it’s less than 24hours away! I’m excited!

Did you know that most of the things we do around Christmas time are reaffirmation and profession of our faith that Jesus is indeed the Christ? When you think Christmas season, what comes to your mind? I can guarantee these four things will be on your list – lights, trees, gifts and love. How do these relate to our faith? There is no founder of any other religion whose birth is celebrated with all four things list listed above, true to what the bible teaches, Jesus Christ is indeed the light of the world, the tree of life, gift of God, the radiance of Love’s glory, and the exact representation of His being (Hebrews 1:3).

You believe in love don’t you? Have you ever seen it? What color or texture is it? What is its weight? You can’t say right? Because love is invisible and indescribable, the weight of it is beyond measure, the depth of it is beyond comprehension and the length and breath of it is beyond imagination. But love, not wanting to remain abstract for all eternity became flesh and dwelt amongst men (John 1:14), for none other than GOD IS LOVE (1John 4:8), and Jesus is the visible likeness of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Therefore, Christmas is a celebration of the birth of true love amongst men. If nothing is worth commemorating and celebrating, the birth of love sure is! Love is what makes life worth living; can you imagine a world without love?

It may be that you don’t feel loved right now; the good thing is your feelings cannot change the fact that you are deeply loved, by Love Himself. God loves you so much that He gave up His ONLY begotten son for about thirty-three years, and within the period watched as mankind mocked His beloved Son, and treated the one for whom and through whom He created the universe (Colossians 1:16) as if He was less than dirt. He endured seeing His dearest Son rejected and despised by the very people He was sent to rescue. He did all these to demonstrate the depth of His love for you. Yes, you mean that much to Him.

Have you ever been separated from a loved one? I have been, because right now I am separated from my children. When you are apart from someone you love, a day is like a thousand years, and everyday you wonder if whatever goal that separation is going to accomplish is worth the pain you have to endure throughout the season of separation. To God, you are worth all that and if He had to do it all over again, I bet you He would.

Your separation may not be from your child or children, it may be from a promise that is yet to come to pass, it may be from a dream that has not come through. Whatever good thing you feel separated from, God understands exactly how you feel and He’s got you covered. I can guarantee that if you don’t give up on your faith, God will make your joy complete (John 16:23-24). Making you happy is His obsession, His kind of happiness stems from His peace, which surpasses human understanding (Philippians 4:7), that means you can choose to be merry in waiting! You can rejoice in hope! You can celebrate in expectation!

It is true; there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven and God made everything beautiful in their time and season (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11) but He does not want you to wait till your appointed time to be happy and have a reason to celebrate, so He loads you with benefits, not yearly, quarterly, monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly but daily! (Psalm 68:19), by the way have you gone to Him today to take delivery of your daily allocation?

Are you convinced yet that God is seeking for every excuse to make you happy? Consider this – for simply calling upon Him, He blesses you, in addition to that He answers you when you call (Romans 10:12-13). It makes perfect sense when people set out on an expedition and get rewarded for their discovery, but Our God does not wait till you find Him to reward you, He rewards you for every step you take towards seeking Him! (Hebrews 11:6). What manner of love is this? It is the love that can be found only in God.

As you celebrate this Christmas, spend some time alone in His presence; let Him know you love Him and spend the rest of your day putting a smile on God’s face by having the merriest Christmas ever!!

SHARE THE FUN! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

With Warmth,
Angela.

PLEAD YOUR CASE

Hi there!

GLAD YOU STOPPED BY!

A couple of years ago, we were transferred to Alaska; I didn’t want to go live in Alaska because my younger son had a health condition that’s not suited to that kind of weather condition. I needed that decision changed without any adverse effect on us, but I was scared I might be going against the will of God, which is something I don’t ever want to do. I shared my fears with a friend who told me something that transformed my prayer life. She said “You know what? With God we are sons and not slaves, sons have a place of negotiation with their fathers, and slaves don’t”. She encouraged me to go to God and plead my case. To me that was revolutionary, it ushered me into a whole new realm in my prayer life. I went to God with my petition; He heard my plea and granted my request, the transfer was changed without any adverse effect on us!

Have you settled for less because you were told it is the will of God for your life? Is something around you not quite right but you feel nothing can be done about it because of the authorities involved? Do you know God can change His mind? Do you know that mercy can triumph over judgment?

God sent the prophet Isaiah to tell king Hezekiah that his time was up and he should get ready to die, Hezekiah pleaded his case before God and God changed His mind, God gave him fifteen more years to live (Isaiah 38:1-6)

The people of Israel made God so mad that He decided to wipe them off the face of the earth, with the plan to raise a new breed through His friend Moses but Moses will have no part in that, he pleaded on behalf of the Israelites, God heard his plea and changed His mind, consequently, the people were spared (Exodus 31:9-14)

According to the custom of the Jews, when a man dies without a male heir, his inheritance does not go to his daughters but to his male relatives, this was so until a man named Zelophehad died. He had no sons, but his daughters rose up to plead their case before Moses and the elders of Israel. Moses in turn presented their arguments before God, and God told him to grant the request of those daughters and pass their father’s inheritance to them (Number 27:1-11)


What did these people do to get the response they got? They did not present their case based on emotions, rather they went before God with facts. Hezekiah’s reviewed the past before God and stated the case for his innocence. Moses’ fact was God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to bring their descendants out of Egypt into the Promise Land. Zelophehad daughters’ fact was their father’s faithfulness to God when other members of his clan banded together against the Lord. What are your facts?

If you desire the result these forerunners got, you need to find out the facts of your case based on the written word of God. Research the bible and find out what it says concerning your matter, combine it with your testimonies and you are ready to present a petition before the throne of God.

God loves to hear our petitions because it is a sign that we are coming into maturity. It is also a sign to the enemy that we are not ones to joke it. God encourages us to come and reason with Him (Isaiah 1:18), He wants us to present our case before Him (Isaiah 41:21) and He wants us to review the past before Him and argue the matter together (Isaiah 43:26)

Whatever your situation is, the word still works, fight to the end, plead your case before God, be strong and of good courage. You are part of an advancing church, the One who built His church promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against you. If you don’t give up, He will come through for you, like He’s done for countless people before you.
SHALLOM!

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

Hi again!

It’s always a pleasure to share my thoughts with you, thanks for stopping by!

Isn’t it amazing how time flies? It’s almost another Christmas day and the end of another year! How has it been for you? Are you looking forward to Christmas and the year ahead? For some, this has been the best year of their lives, so this Christmas will be one to remember for a long time to come. There are some that can’t wait for this year to roll past because it’s been one nightmare they can’t wait to wake up from, yet there are others who can’t seem to find a reason to be excited but don’t feel justified to be depressed. What category are you in?

A couple of days ago, my husband and I were discussing how unfair our human nature is towards God and how desperately we need trade our human nature for the divine nature. Why? Our human nature lacks the ability to retain the good and give up the bad, it has a terrible memory problem, it’s so short sighted and impatient. All it understands and lives for is me, mine and myself. For example, in less than a month after God delivered the Israelites from Egypt by signs and wonders, they turned their hearts against God and were ready to kill Moses, whom God used to deliver them. God destroyed the whole earth in the days of Noah because of the evilness of men’s heart, yet before the death of Noah and his sons who witnessed the earth’s destruction, their descendants had already began to turn away from the true God.

It’s easy to point fingers at those people, but in reality are we any different? There are answered prayers I was hoping will manifest before the end of this year but it hasn’t happened yet, as a result there were times this year I bought into Satan’s lie that God had abandoned me ( don’t buy into stuff like that, it’s poisonous!) I can’t tell you how many times I allowed the enemy to steal my joy because I chose to focus on the few things that has not happened, totally ignoring the countless blessings that have come my way this year. How dumb and miserable can we be when we chose to focus on the wrong things! Can the hand that parted the Red Sea not be able to provide water in the desert?

It is true that nobody drives ahead with their eyes totally focused on the rear view mirror. It is also true, like I said in my previous blogg, that if you are going to arrive safely at your destination in God, you must learn to leave the past in the past, however, there is a part of the past you must never leave behind – your blessings and victories. These should never depart from your eyes, you must keep them in the midst of your heart, they are the shields you will need to protect your joy, they are the sword you will need to extinguish the lies of the enemy, they are the belt you will need to gird yourself because every one of those blessings and victories are declarations of the faithfulness of our unchanging God!

Take out time today to count your blessings, name them one by one, and as the song writer said, “… it will surprise you what the Lord has done”

I want to challenge you to take it a step further, write down all your blessings and victories for 2007, recount them to yourself daily for the rest of this year, if possible share them with people who will rejoice with you and see what happens. Will you share your results with me? I’d be glad to read from you.

Rejoice in the Lord always! And again I say REJOICE! SHALOM!!