End/Beginning of Year Greetings

May the New Year, 2006 bring you new hopes, opportunities and loads of blessings from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Too Weak To Reach The Peak

In the Garden of Eden, it was not a problem being noticed. I was creeping on the ground but no one trampled on me. I was valued just like anybody else. It never mattered whether one was high or low. The fruit that I was producing was being noticed, utilised and appreciated. The First Couple could stop and give me attention; they could stoop and pick what I had to offer. But this was until the Deceiver conceived deception which he made the First Couple receive with curiosity.

One mid-day, the Deceiver came and pointed the couple up a tree.

“Have you people considered the fruit high on the tree?” He greeted them.

“But that fruit is too high and out of reach for us”, the lady of the Garden responded.

“If you can’t reach it, how then will you be rich in knowledge”? He challenged them and offered, “I will help you reach it”.

The Lady of the Garden who had just assumed the Public Relations portfolio tried to put up a defence. Her parlance, however, was not pensive enough to show their resolve not to indulge. The Deceiver noticed this and pressed on,

“Things higher up will get you high”.

They succumbed. Since then, mankind has had his focus on “high things”. They forgot that even some of us who are tender and at the base have something to offer.

Left on my own, I can only creep. I have so much to offer but who will see them at the base? The fruit I was designed to produce was meant to be utilised. It is frustrating giving when no one is taking.

“How will they see my fruit if it is not lifted off the ground?” I cried to the One who made me the way I am. This is what He answered:

“Whether they see your fruit or not shouldn't be your concern. Your work is to produce the fruit that I have assigned you to produce”.

He explained further that He has made it clear in the Constitution that people must mind the so-thought “insignificant” things or people. It is no secret that He has His attention on the humble side of life. If He has to, He would occasionally provide a “ladder” to climb to make the fruits more visible. This, however, is an exception rather than a rule.

Men are proud. They have their eyes set on things that are already highly placed. They will never know what they are trampling on.

I am weak, I can't speak loud enough to call attention to my fruits.

I am weak, I don’t have enough strength to climb to the peak. If only I could reach the limelight, I could bring to light the fruit that I was assigned to produce.

I can’t stand on my own. I don’t need a rummage of an elephant to cause me untold damage. The carnage of a small fox is rough enough to ravage me.

When the floods come, I can’t survive because I am vulnerable. At one time when I was overwhelmed by floods, I thought I was going to drown, it, however, turned out to be my moment of crown. How did it happen? The One who came down did so in order that I don’t drown. He accepted to provide a support. I climbed on and twined my arms around Him. Because of this, I have been able to hang my fruit in the eyes of the world to see. They have picked and enjoyed the succulent sap in my fruit. The mistake they make though is that they think I am at the top “by factory settings”. Attempts to point to them that there are better things at the base where I have my root is as difficult as trying to cut a huge tree using a razor blade.

And now, if you didn’t know who has been speaking, let me introduce myself:
My name is Vine and my fruit is called Grape.

The Dictionary.com defines me as “A weak-stemmed plant that derives its support from climbing, twining, or creeping along a surface”.

More often my name is pluralized thus: “Vines”. The reason is that I don't exist alone. I thrive in a congregation.

Now if you will excuse me, I would like to twine my arms around your stem and branches so that I can climb to the hights where my fruit can be noticed.

(The foto above is taken from Freefoto).

Will You Refuse To Be Saved?

Let's be honest for once. If you were in a burning house, or a sinking ship will you refuse to be saved?

If one cannot afford to "die" a physical death that at worst turns one into "nothingness" and at best makes one "escape" the pains and disappointments in this life, how much more would people raise their arms to be saved from eternal damnation?

Someone may say, "Give me a break, there is nothing like eternal damnation!" Well, what if there is? Why do people take insurance?

Did you know that if it was not for the Deceiver of the world whom many people don't want to believe exists, everyone would have taken an "insurance policy" against eternal loss?

What if it is true? Think about it? People don't want to admit but the evidence of the truth is overwhelming.

Win to Lose, Lose to Win

Sometimes we win by losing and lose by winning—the assignment is: Can we tell when?

A loss can be a win and a win can be a loss—the problem is to know when.

A man, a powerful professional boxer, was being molested and bullied by two teenagers who thought that numerical superiority could make them tackle the man. They failed to recognise him.

The boxer knew that by taking up the challenge and getting into physical confrontation with the youngsters, he would hurt them.

Instead of fighting back, he simply walked away. The youngsters followed him for quite a while reigning insults on him. Determined to ignore the insults, it was like the two young men were throwing a ball on a mattress instead of on a wall.

Some media people who happened to be passing by watched undercover. They later highlighted this case in the media. The man was honoured while the teenagers hounded for their uncouthness. They thought they won when the man failed to pick their challenge. They lost in the long run.

O how I would love to be in a society where we don't erect walls to meet the balls of insults thrown to us! If we instead provide foams, we would'nt have a toothless society and, ironically, spare the society of a flood of blood.

Now, if you will, please let the person keep his dental formula despite the provocations.

Sowing And Reaping (Part 2)

If sowing is a sacrifice, the harvest will be a benefit—this is a profit.
But if sowing is the benefit, reaping will be a weeping—this is a sacrifice.

Sacrifice is good only if it comes at the beginning, not at the end.

If the benefit comes at the sowing stage, beware that sacrifice will come at the reaping stage.

It is better to begin with a sacrifice and end with a profit than start with a profit and end with a sacrifice.

Watch! Don’t allow sacrifice to be the end product of your endeavours.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a sacrificial seed to sow!

Sowing And Reaping (Part 1)

Sowing is voluntary,
Reaping is compulsory.
Mind what you sow!

One way of minding what we sow is by sowing with our mind, that is, thinking through what we are sowing.

The Validity Of Christianity

The validity of Christianity
Rests on Christ's Divinity.

Apart from Christ, there is no strategy against the tragedy of sin.

Religion without Christ is a rebellion against God.

If we don’t accept to be guided by the Scripture,
We will be by the culture.

A surgery by the Scripture is better than the sugary of the culture.

Now if you will excuse me, I have something to capture in the Scripture.

The Ear That Could Smell And A Nose That Could Taste

Kaimo and Boido had just presented their passports to the Seraphim manning the gate of Paradiso. The two friends were not anxious about the thorough scrutiny the Seraphim subjected their passports to. They had accepted the seal of the Blood of the Lamb instead of that of religion.

Their Christocentric zeal showed how they valued the seal of the Saviour. They avoided all the cages of the enemy. They were now at the verge of meeting the Rock of Ages and harvesting the pledges in the pages of His Word.

“I am smelling something”, Kaimo said as he stared at his friend’s face for concurrence.

“I am not surprised”, Boido responded as he confirmed that his olfactory mechanism was alert.

“They don’t have an ounce of anxiety over what my verdict might be!” The Seraphim wondered.

He was impressed by their relaxed disposition but tried to hide it. He had seen the seal of the Blood of the Lamb and knew that they had made it. But just to “test them”, he explained that they were at the verge of either stepping into eternal glory or eternal agony. They were unscathed.

Finally, he tantalised them a bit just to ascertain that they knew “where” they were. “I hope you know that no hate is allowed beyond this gate”.

“Hate!” Kaimo was surprised to hear the word. “My mate and I know our fate. We were never late when the Lord Jesus called us to have our hate washed away”.

With a smile, the Seraphim congratulated them and handed them their passports. "I am sure you'll enjoy your eternal stay in Paradiso", he told them.

As they walked through the gate, Kaimo noticed Boido having some strange, long, deep inhalings. His friend was enjoying the aroma that was now becoming increasingly ubiquitous and assorted. He remembered what Boido had said.

“Did you say you were not surprised?” Kaimo asked.

“I hope you didn’t mistake ‘not surprised’ with ‘not liking’”, Bodo responded and explained further why he was ‘not surprised’. 1 Corinthians 2:9 was one of his favourites:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”.

He was “prepared” to smell, see, hear and feel things that he had no chance perceiving when he wore an earthly body.

No sooner had he quoted the above scripture than he realised that there was no amount of “preparation” that could stop him from being “surprised”. He had just had overwhelming rash of new experiences. Now Bodo had to admit—he was surprised. The fragrance had become even compellingly sweeter. He had just “smelled” the fragrance by the tasting of the mouth. The beauty of paradise and the experiences of the new body was something that MUST surprise any created being. There were not only thousands of new senses added to them, but they could also see with their ears and tell the taste of something by smelling it; they could hear by their eyes and see by their nose. One could smell and see the sound. The smell of sound, for example, gave its other properties that the ear couldn’t bring out. Any time they saw sound by their nose or smelled a colour by their ear, Kaimo, would exclaim, “It is beautiful!”Boido would respond, “No! ‘Beautiful’ is not the word!”

According to Bodo, ‘beautiful’ was the word they used to describe natural beauties on earth. If one were to go back to earth and use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe the paradisal spiritual beauties, people would think these things are comparable to the beautiful things on earth yet there is no comparison.

“There must be heavenly language to describe the paradisal beauties. I believe we are soon getting the vocabulary to describe what we are experiencing”, Boido poised.

“Listen, I can hear something…!”

“Yes! I can taste it…!”

“I can now see the taste…!”

“Wow, What was that? I have just had a new experience through one of the new senses. I don’t have the vocabulary for it! You just have to experience it for yourself”, Boido remarked.

There was no end to new experiences. As they shouted to each other about the beauties they were seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, hearing and other innumerable things, it turned out to be a beautiful song—a new song whose melody was capable of healing any malady on earth. If only they could send the melody back to earth…!

“Wow, what was that…?”

“Call it, ‘Somothbe’—SOmething MOre THan BEautiful!”

-------------------------

Author's Note:
That was just an imagination. Think of things being beyond what we can think or imagine. If only this can be true! Imagine it is! Those who have made the choice will be happy they did.

Sorry, The Diskette Is Full!

One thing I know: I asked God for something and He gave it to me. It is a long story that I may not tell here but suffice it to say that I am the small boy in tattered clothes in the picture. The picture, the only one I have of my tender age, was taken one year before my sickly dad died. My mother had left us 5 years earlier.

Some people out there don’t believe in God, or they may do but are not careful to have a solemn commitment to pursue His pleasure in their life.

For me it is loud and clear. My life was like a diskette, full of self-gratification stuff. I was very religious but religion doesn’t save anyone. I played holiness on Sundays and lived my life the way my flesh dictated the rest of the week. Then one day, the Spirit led me into a meeting. I went but very reluctantly. Before the end of the meeting, it was clear to me that either I receive Christ in my life or risk eternal separation with God. Though I was reluctant at the beginning, I later realised that either I give it all or nothing. I released all the space in the diskette of my life and asked God to help me save in the “diskette” only the stuff that would benefit me spiritually and glorify God.

When I did that, I realised that a solemn relationship with God through Christ is all the craving vacuum in me had been looking for. Today, if I meet a sceptic or a religious person, I can only say one thing: “I know that I asked God for something, and He gave it to me. No one will ever take it away from me, and no one will ever make me doubt what I can touch and see.”

Many people don’t “enjoy” their relationship with God because the diskette of their life is FULL—full of stuff that are not compatible with the "file format" of Godly life. Any time they try to “save” the things of God in their life, they get the message, “Sorry, release space in your diskette, try again”. However much they try, they would get the same message again and again. Either the space is released or nothing will happen.

Last Sunday (4th Dec), Torfinn Myhre, one of the leaders in our local church (KF-Skien), preached. His preaching this time, was not the traditional “high voltage spiritual stuff”. In fact, he never read from the Bible.

He reflected on the prophecies and promises that God had spoken to individuals and to the church. Some of them were very specific. God has fulfilled some of them in spectacular ways. Those that haven’t already been fulfilled, we are waiting upon Him with expectation.

For me, I was touched so deeply because I was able to ask myself, “What has God spoken in my life and what has He done about it?” The answers were overwhelming. I did playback my memory to my childhood times when I made childish but sincere prayers—specific on a certain matter. God showed me something as a guarantee that He heard and granted my prayers. I hanged on to what God showed me and true to His nature, He answered it. He never provided a shortcut though. I went the full length, sometimes mark-timing.

There are some that He has not fulfilled but I only need to know that He spoke. His promise alone is enough to sustain my dreams. They can sustain yours too.

Psalm 119:50 (NIV) says, “My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life”.
Even before it is fulfilled, God’s promise is enough to sustain life. God inspires His promises by His Spirit, therefore they don’t expire.

Amen!

If you want to have a personal relationship with Christ, please click HERE for more instructions.

Scoring In A Mobile Goal?

It is not what you start with but what you end with that determines your destiny. If you started on a wrong footing, change your step. Put the right foot forward in the course of your journey. If you started on a right footing, continue—do not change your step.

A person who started on a wrong footing but realised it in the course of the journey and changed will still have something to regret about—that is, counting his loses caused by the wrong start. On the other hand, the person who started well and neither faulted nor faltered will have nothing to regret about.

It is better to start wrong but end right than start right but end wrong (See Ezekiel 33:12-20).

It doesn’t matter where you start from, it matters which direction you take. If you can't tell that you are from east, you can't equally tell that you are headed west. You must know where you are coming from to know where you are going to.

It is as good as impossible scoring in a mobile goal. It is like journeying towards a mobile destination. There are things in life that must just be fixed for them to be meaningful.

Do you have fixed points of reference in your life and environment? Don’t allow the ideological hypnotism of relativism make you wander in life with little or no sense of direction and destiny.

The Love Of God

The love of God is too high, you can't reach its top,
Trying to gauge its height is like an antelop trying to scale a tall tree.

In Ephesians 3:17-19 (KJV), it is recorded:

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

If we can understand the love of God, we wouldn't have a problem with the paradox in verse 19. The highest level of the knowledge of the love of God is when we come to know that the best we know about God's love is not all that can be known about it, therefore it goes beyond our knowledge.

Nobody Warned Me

I was born in Kenya and lived there for the next 30 years.

When I went abroad for further studies, I knew nothing practical about winter. The way the ground could get frozen and slippery, especially an icy road, was something I would have appreciated if someone put me down and gave me some good lecture.

I was out one morning cycling to school, some 6 km away. The lecture was soon beginning. If I cycled as fast as I used to do, I wouldn’t be late for the lecture.

It was cold but that was all I had known that far about winter. I never noticed that the road was icy. I was approaching a bend. The university was hardly 300 meters away and I still had about 7 minutes on my side. I checked the watch and thought to myself, “I have made it”. But had I?

What happened next was so fast it took me time to figure out whether I was having a bad dream or it was real. The bicycle was going right, the direction I had attempted to turn towards, as I was skating on my back, straight along the road.

What happened? I had no idea! I later learnt that I had ignorantly mixed the four incompatibles: Full speed, icy ground, braking and a bend. I fell so hard and it happened so fast that I had no chance.

At least someone would have warned me how to behave on a slippery ground.

Did you know that life can be very slippery without Christ? With Christ you can cope with life because of the hope.

Did you know that living your life without accepting Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Saviour is worse than cycling at full speed while taking a bend on an icy road? When the time comes to take the bend of life, you may fall so hard and so fast that you wouldn’t have a chance of survival.

Don’t make indifference and ignorance be your downfall. Don’t allow religion confuse you so as to refuse Christ. Generally, religion is a rebellion while relationship with Jesus Christ is Redemption. Have you been redeemed?

If you would like to receive Christ as Lord and Saviour, please click HERE for more instructions.

The Positive Side Of Mistakes

What do you do with mistakes, whether they are made by others or by yourself?

Things to do with a mistake:

1. The value of a mistake is its power to teach a lesson. I think it is from this that people say, "Experience is a good teacher";
2. A lesson learnt from a mistake is powerful and effective;
3. Don't be hard on yourself if you made an 'original mistake'. Use the lesson you learnt to teach yourself and others. By so doing, you shall have made a positive contribution from a negative incident;
4. Expose a mistake as far as this is reasonable.

Things not to do with a mistake:

1. Even after something good has resulted from it, don't justify a mistake;
2. Don't ever repeat a mistake;
3. Don't try to cover a mistake by making another mistake. Trying to cover a mistake is making another mistake. This in return leads to compounded mistakes. When mistakes are compounded, the lessons that ought to have been learnt get shrouded. Remember, mistakes can never be corrected by making another mistake;
4. If someone made a mistake and got away with it, don't ever think that you can also make the same mistake and get away with it, even if the circumstances remain the same.

Poor At Home, Rich Away

And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found (Luke 15:31-32 KJV).

I would rather be with my Father “empty-handed” than be away from Him “fully-handed”.I would rather be 'poor' but in the presence of the Father than be 'rich' but away from Him.

I would rather have my property in the custody of my Father than have the liberty to use them at will.

I Desire Your Face, O LORD

When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek (Psalm 27:8 KJV).

I pray that I don't get pre-occupied by what Your hand gives but by seeking Your face that I may reflect the radiance from Your face.

If You Fail To Choose, You Choose To Fail

There are cases where the choice has to be made. By refusing to choose, you shall have made your choice. In school we sometimes got multiple choice questions. The point here is that either you choose and choose the correct answer or don’t choose anything at all and you shall have been put in the same group with those who chose wrong answers.

Are there choices that are facing you? Don't choose not to choose. You must know that not choosing will make you end up with something you wouldn't chosen given a choice. You have the choice now, go ahead choose--and choose right.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV):

"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..."

Granted, we may not need to be "advised" what to choose if we have between given two options: Life and Death. If we refuse to choose life, we will end up with death even if we don't choose it directly.