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Accept or Reject?

Earlier in the month I shared with you that my mandate from the LORD for 2024 was to consciously and intentionally accept Him everyday; and almost everyday of this year so far, I hear or read something that reminds me of this mandate. For example, on January 6th, my daughter’s bible devotion was titled “choose” and the message was very interesting. The scripture was from Judges 21:25

In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Judges 21:25 NLT

The devotional’s author suggested that the cliches “follow your truth” and “you do you” are not new at all! In fact rewind a few thousand years and the Israelites were living the “you do you ” life! Everyone followed their own truth and it was a godless and debased time in the history of the Israelites. Sounds familiar? Let’s fast forward back to 2024.

Yesterday my daily bible readings led me to the book of Isaiah, Chapter 1 to be precise, and here we hear God speaking to the Israelites about their choices. In their actions, words, thoughts, worship, service, they had rejected God everyday and God was telling them He was tired of being rejected! He was lamenting over Israel’s choosing to continue in their own waywardness and rebellion. They had turned their backs on the LORD (vs. 4). And their lives were a sight for sore eyes: they were physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually battered. As scripture described it, their heads were injured and their hearts were sick (vs. 5-6) and their worship which they thought might bring them closer to God rather became detestable to Him. The simple reason was this: they continued to reject God. Just before year 2023 ended, I heard a preacher say this, “If you keep saying “NO” to God and continue to reject Him, one of these days God will accept your NO and visit His judgment on you”. And guess what, that is exactly what God is saying to the Israelites in Isaiah Chapter 1:15. He says:

“When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look. Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen…”

Isaiah 1:15 NLT

But all is not lost for rebellious Israel and neither is it for us today. Our Redeeming God offers a solution. “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool…” (Isaiah 1:18 NLT). But there is a caveat: We have to choose to accept Him and everything He offers! Do you feel beaten down and battered by life? Are your prayers appearing to not reach God’s ears? God wants to settle you! But first start with some self-reflection, is there something that you need to settle with God? In what areas of your life are you rejecting Him? One of the ways we reject God is by being so busy with the hustle and bustle of life that we leave little to no room for God’s presence or power in our lives. Isaiah 5:12 captures this so aptly:

They furnish wine and lovely music at their grand parties- lyre and harp, tambourine and flute- but they never think about the LORD or notice what he is doing.

Isaiah 5:12 NLT

When it comes to accepting God, I have a lot to learn and given my mandate for the year, I am sure I am going to learn a lot about this. If you are further along on the journey of what it means to accept and choose Jesus everyday or if God is teaching you something about this in your daily walk with Him, please feel free to share with me, leave a comment, I am excited to learn from you. This year I plan to be intentional about thinking about God every day and to notice what He is doing in my life, among the people in my sphere of influence, and in the world at large. I want to pay attention to what God is saying and requiring of me. That is one of the ways I want to accept Him each day. How? I will engage with my readings each day and anticipate that God wants to tell me something from His word. I will pose questions to God as I read my bible and actively listen for answers throughout the day. I will not hesitate to pray for the things God lays on my heart or if people request prayer of me and excitedly anticipate God’s move in my life and in those of the people I pray for.

P.S. For those of you who are curious about my daily bible reading plan, I use the Olive Tree Bible app on my phone and this year I am following the 52-week bible plan, “A different Genre Each Day”. If you are looking for a reading partner, feel free to join me on this reading journey.

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Today is the Day!

Sometime in October of 2023, I went over all my goals for the year and realized I had fallen behind on so many of them (one of which was to post to the blog every week). Feeling discouraged, I decided that since too much of the year had passed to accomplish some of those goals, I would just wait till the new year and then start afresh. However, there was a scripture that kept tugging at my heart:

As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” 

Hebrews 3:15 NIV

Today. Not next year, not next month, not next week, today! Many times, we take for granted that tomorrow is not guaranteed us and we put off for tomorrow what we can do today. January is a month where people push for change and it is a good time for change. Afterall, its the start of a new year! Many people just like myself will make new year’s resolutions and set goals for themselves to achieve through out the year and many of us will fall off the wagon of some of our resolutions before the month is out. Here are two thoughts on the matter- the first comes from my daughter’s devotional, and the second is a lesson from 2023:

First, before going through all the effort of trying to fulfill our goals whatever they may be, why not first slow down and submit them to God? Remember “in their hearts humans plan their course but the LORD establishes their steps (Proverbs 16:9 NIV).” God wants us to submit our plans to him- our wonderful ideas for a successful 2024 and ask Him what He wants to work on this January and Febrauary and every month thereafter. In doing this, you will find a satisfying journey with a Friend rather than an exhausting and lonely marathon to accomplishing your goals.

Secondly, if you start to renege on your goals- perhaps you have already missed a few days of your 365-day bible reading plan, or your exercise regime, or you have already fallen back into patterns and behaviours you were hoping to change this year, it is not too late to course correct. It is never ever too late to fix what is broken, to jump back into relationship with God, to take care of your emotional, physical, and spiritual health, to let go of that hurt or guilt, to forgive…today is the day. Although bright hope for eternity is promised us, another day on this side of eternity is not guaranteed to anyone.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

James 4: 13- 14 NIV

So today is the day. Whatever it is that you are putting off, today is the day.

Yours Truly

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Hello 2024

At the end of every year, my husband and I spend time reflecting, praying, and asking God for a word or scripture that will guide our lives for the upcoming year; what we call our mandate for the year. Last year’s mandate was a very interesting one. It came from the book of revelations:

I know your deeds; you have a reputation for being alive, yet you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains, which was about to die; for I have found your deeds incomplete in the sight of My God. Remember, then, what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know the hour when I will come upon you.

Revelations 3:1-3 NIV

With that mandate, I knew going into 2023 that it was destined to be an interesting and challenging year. What I did not know was that 2023 will be one of the longest years I had yet to experience! Although the days, weeks, and months flew by relatively quickly, the losses, disappointments, and failures I experienced in the year made each day feel so long and drawn out. Many times, it felt like what little I had left of my joy, peace,and sanity were being chipped at bit by bit and each of those times, the mandate was clear, “Wake up…strengthen what remains.” As I grasped dearly to promises and encouragements from scripture, songs, sermons, family, and well wishers, I was very cognizant of the first part of the mandate as well: “you have a reputation for being alive, yet you are dead.” Throughout the challenges of 2023, I kept asking God to show me the areas of my life were my deeds were incomplete and boy did those trials show me! I learnt so much about myself and my relationship with God as everything and I mean everything I have come to know about God was tested. I trust that in this beautiful year 2024, I will have ample opportunity to share more details of the lessons from 2023.

2024 will be another interesting year. There will be more to learn but this time, I am ready. I am prepared to trust God through the process and relinquish the reins to Him. It will be a year where I will need to learn to listen and obey. The leadings and promptings of God will be such rich currency to navigate 2024 as the world plunges into a financial recession. As morality continues to decline both in the church and in the world, walking in step with God will be important as I continue to strengthen what remains. My mandate for this new year is as clear as day: God is asking that each day I conciously and intentionally make a choice to accept Him. What does this mean? I am sure I will find out this year won’t I?

Well, I look forward to each day of 2024 and I receive each day with joy and thanksgiving and with anticipation of what God has in store for me. My guiding prayer for 2024 is found in none other than Psalm 86

Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.

Psalm 86:11 NIV

And I pray this for you as I pray this for myself today and for all 366 days of this year (Yes, its a leap year…exciting!).

Yours truly

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My confessions: Anger

Sometime in 2021, I started to notice little things that annoyed me greatly.  Slowly, these things built up and I became indignant… and then angry. For the past two years, my anger has felt justified… Of course, I have been wronged by so and so person… how inconsiderate of them! For a period of time, I was even angry at God! But while I have  been harbouring and  justifying my anger for these many months, it has become like a canker that has eaten away at my peace of mind and has made it difficult for me to realize God’s purpose in my life.

For the past few months, I have been praying  and asking God to help me find my way back and a few days ago, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw someone I have been upset at for almost a year, who looked at me  in the eye and asked, “why are you so angry at me?” I thought hard and long and realized I was unsure of exactly what I was mad at. When I  woke up, I asked God (well if I am honest, I was probably just asking myself) to show me why I was so angry. And to my surprise God answered and this is what He told me:

Anger is a seed that grows and becomes a deciduous tree. It forms deep roots in the heart of a person and with each anger-inducing incident, the roots get deeper and then it starts to bear fruits. The fruits include resentment, malice, hatred, depression, anxiety, rage, and murder.  To illustrate, God reminded me of the story of the impure spirit in Matthew 12: 44-45 that finds a conducive environment and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself to come and occupy, making the final condition of the person worse than the first… anger works just like that. It starts as something small but if left unchecked, will slowly gain a foothold and occupy your heart; slowly pushing out the spirit of God from your heart and replacing the fruit of God’s spirit with its own fruits.

Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing, it has its good side too. It can be a very potent motivator but when we allow it to take control of us it becomes an inhibitor. That is why God admonishes in Ephesians 4:26-27, “In your anger do not sin; Do not let the sun go down while you are  still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Anger should run its course for a short period of time and then the issue must be resolved so the devil does not use that anger as a gateway into your heart.

So, what should we do when the time limit of anger is reached and the feeling of anger still persists? 1 Sam 15:11  gives us a clue: “Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the LORD all that night”. He recognized God’s sovereignty over everything and turned over the situation to God in prayer but he did not stop there. we read in verse 12 that he rose up early in the morning to confront King Saul (the object of his anger). After praying, Samuel took  tangible steps towards resolution.

 So, I asked God, “now that I am stuck in this funk of being angry all the time, how do I get out of it?” A good starting place is Psalm 51 (particularly verses 10-12):

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Confess the anger to God and ask for a renewal of His spirit in your heart. The spirit of God will illuminate the areas where anger has brought darkness and restore joy back into your life. God’s spirit will continue His work of restoration and renewal by manifesting His fruit in your heart. You will experience more love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23) in your life and the anger that has taken root will slowly start to dissipate. You will find that you will become more forgiving and will start to become more oblivious to why you were angry, allowing you to let go of any ill-feelings towards others. The fruit of the Holy Spirit will help you deal with anger at its very roots: the more love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control you have, the less angry you will become at people and circumstances. And one day, you will wake up and realize you are not angry anymore. This will take some work and a willing heart. That is why God admonishes us with these words:

“… walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these… Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (emphasis mine).

Galatians 5:16-21; 25 KJV

Keeping in step with God’s Spirit  is a daily affair. God’s spirit will help us know when to be angry and when to let go. The Holy spirit will help us set limits and healthy boundaries for our anger. His work is to ensure that our lives reflect Jesus Christ and if anyone knows when to be angry and when to relent, we have an example in God through the pages of Scripture. What those limits and boundaries are will vary for each individual and each circumstance but the constant will be that  it will be spirit-led!

I would like to conclude with a prayer for more of God’s grace to be even-tempered and spirit-filled. Here is a compilation of some scriptures that caution against anger for your reading pleasure https://www.bible.com/search/bible?query=anger

Yours Truly

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I choose Joy

This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24 NLT

For many years I have thought joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit that cannot be present in our lives apart from the Holy Spirit. And for many years I have ascribed my lack of finding joy and pleasure in things to the fact that perhaps it is how it is supposed to be. I have opened myself up to the Holy Spirit and asked Him to fill my life with His joy and so if I am not joyful then it is not my fault.

This evening I was reading a book titled the ‘Habits of a Godly Woman’ and came across one of the topics, ‘the habit of joy’. As the author suggests joy is a habit that can be cultivated. You can be joyful on purpose and you can incorporate a habit of joy in your life! I read through the chapter with a lot of skepticism until I came to the verse I have quoted in my opening. This is a verse I repeat very often whenever I am in the gathering of believers. In fact, once or twice per month I serve in church as the service director and I always start my production meetings with the catch phrase “this is the day the LORD has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Up until this moment this verse has been a cliché for me. Something I always say to bring people’s attention to the fact that we are about to start the meeting. Today, what caught my attention was the phrase “we will rejoice.” This phrase suggests that joy (and rejoicing) is a choice. God has made the day- He has once again given us breath in our lungs and has blessed us with a day that He calls Today. He has made provisions for the day by giving us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3) so that we can seize all the opportunities in the day but it is up to us to a large extent how we show up and posture through out the day. God has already filled our hearts with joy as a result of our salvation (1 Peter 1:8-9) but it is up to us to allow this joy to be expressed in full measure in our lives.

Joy is a habit that can be developed. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you can decide to focus on everything that is good about your situation and choose to rejoice. As you do that often, you will develop the habit of joy. There are so many expressions of joy. The more obvious one is through laughter, but that is not the only way to express joy. The author suggests joy produces a range of emotions from extreme hilarity to calm delight. However we choose to express joy (depending on the situation and circumstance) the end goal is that it gives us strength and strengthens those around us.

The joy of the LORD is our strength

Nehemiah 8:10

I am an introvert by nature and would not be described by those who know me as the life of the party but on many occasions I put myself out there and have charmed many an audience with my quick wit and sense of humor. I am hilarious when I want to be and so there is nothing that prevents me from choosing to be joyful always. Choosing to be joyful does not mean I need to change who I am and become an extrovert. For my introvert friends, the joy of the LORD can be a quiet confidence (Isaiah 30: 15). The bottom line is that the joy of the LORD has nothing to do with who we are and everything to do with who He is. It comes from knowing whom we have believed in and reveling in all that He has done and is continuing to do in our lives.

In 2023, let us choose to be joyful on purpose. Let’s be intentional about choosing joy and enjoying the benefits of everyday called Today. This is the year the LORD has made we will rejoice and be glad in the remaining 358 days left.

Yours Truly

P.S. Wow! 2022 was quite the year! I rejoice for the grace of a new year 2023!