The voice in me

When you say you are a Christian, do you know exactly what that means? Do you understand the weight it carries.  Do you really know the God whom you claim to worship.

Came across a video on Facebook of a guy who was being interviewed.  He was asked if he was a Christian and his response struck me hard. He explained how it’s not a matter of just believing there is a God. We talking about total submission and accepting all that comes with being His child. How it’s about carrying your cross,  not being conformed to this world, to be ready to be denied or rejected and even persecuted. It involves you dying to yourself and allowing Christ living in you. It means striving to getting closer to God everyday and fighting off everything that may try to stop you.

I ask again , do you understand what you claim to believe in?

I have been going back and forth over this issue. Humans are social beings, we can’t live in isolation yet I always feel like i should self isolate.

As my journey has been unfolding, I have found myself wanting to delete myself from people. I changed my phone number which automatically removed more than half of people that used to be in my circle. I deleted numbers that I felt were nolonger worth keeping. Went silent on a number of groups I used to engage with.

But it wasn’t helping in anyway. I was still feeling the hurt. The pain of realizing how unimportant I was to certain people I thought were family. The pain of being shown the truth of where you stand in people’s lives. Repeatedly left when you needed love the most.Isolating did not heal me .

Sadly, even though I was trying to get closer to God I was also ‘low key’ isolating myself from Him. I don’t know how I got tricked into this. But somehow I was falling deeper into this world of just me against the world. You can kmagine how helpless that feels especially if you have low selfesteem.

Yes I have a loving family, surrounded with pretty awesome, supportive people at work, yet I was silently drowning.

It got me thinking,  what if this is exactly what the enemy wants me to do. Kill myself slowly ? If he can’t do it, he could possible trick me into doing it myself. Therefore I end up cutting off people that I probably need in my life (stopped going to church). Shutting people out to prevent hurt yet they were to help me grow.

When storms rise and you can’t pray, you can’t talk to people, the tendency is to close yourself in, but is that the best way out or you are simply making yourself more vulnerable to self damage.

Still the question is not answered,  what can you do?

I got to say am no artist.  Never had the hand of one. But lately in my lonely hours ,to fill the void,  I have been trying out new things.

Blogging was birthed from heartache; a breakup and lost dream. Am still not a good blogger. Gosh, I for one know am the worst when it comes to spellings and grammar but am still doing it anyway. 

I find this inner peace in expressing myself in different ways. So I have been venturing into drawing, dancing and singing. It helps me not only kill time but give no room to negative energy. It’s just me exploring more to myself than what I know about me. 

Today was feeling the blues. No excitement,  busy shift at work and again negative thoughts were building up. So I decided to draw a piece.  Let me rephrase that. I decided to learn how to draw a human face. I found a video on Instagram,  and followed through until that piece came out. All of a sudden my blues got away. I felt happy to have done this. I don’t even remember what was making me sad to begin with.

I encourage you to explore whatever catches your eyes that will let positivity flow through you and chase the blues away.

Cheers !

Been struggling with negative thoughts a little extra in this season. Random thoughts popping out from nowhere, telling me am not pretty enough,  am not good enough company,  am not lovable, am not for keeps, I suck at everything,  not smart enough. Theses things have been on my mind the past couple of days.

At some point I remember wishing I didn’t exist entirely. The whole thing is just exhausting. But because I was trying to be strong I shoved off the thoughts as they came.  Little did I know I was just banking all the emotions associated with the negativity. And eventually, broke down with such heaviness,  cried all night. This has happened to me many times , it’s like a pattern.  I constantly find myself in this depressed state where am all choked up.

It’s been a few days from this episode and am looking back.  What if we are supposed to challenge the negative thoughts and not just brush them off. What if these thoughts are seeds the devil plants and because we don’t remove them or we ignore them, they grow to produce fruit. 

What if challenging the negative thoughts with positivity from the word of God can help us break the cycle of depression in our lives?

Am reading the book of Job. A thought hit me while reading chapter 27. My bible,Kings James version has a heading that reads; Job:Iam innocent.

At this time his friends were somehow telling him he was evil and should repent because all these bad things were happening as a result of his wickedness before God. But he kept on denying it. He didn’t curse God alright, but also he did not doubt his position as well.

Right now as Christians so many things happen to us. I will speak for myself. When bad things happen to me I start to even doubt my position in Christ. Though am saved by grace but there are situations that can make me feel like I don’t even deserve the grace.  And I may have doubted my salvation. Certain situations that make it looks like God ain’t there and what’s happening to me is the opposite of what should happen since am saved. And I end up thinking maybe am not what I think I am.

Am I the only one like this ? Does anyone else out there understand what am trying to say.

Wonder how people are saving and investing in our current times. When economies rise and fall in unpredictable ways.

As someone who wants to live according to God’s word, what if paying my tithe is actually one of the good investments.  Helping the poor, needy, widow, ophans a good savings account ?

Do we trust God enough with our savings and investments? Is it a proven method or just a scheme to feed the ‘Man of God ‘?

One of the trickiest topics to talk about.  But I wonder what makes sense? Investing in a business deals that may or may not benefit you, relying on our very much unstable economies. Or investing where there is guarantee that it is not only an obvious  win but multiplied, secure, and safe.

Would you rather doubt God ‘ system because of people, or trust world’s system because of people or trust God’s system because He is God regardless of the people? 

I don’t know what you believe,  but is your system working? Do you see progress in your financial world or things are continously hard. Maybe not hard but a tight fit all the time. I wonder !

Wasn’t blogging these past weeks because didn’t feel led to. But I realized that it doesn’t have to be based on my current state of mind ,but rather on the fact that I have to share what I have.

I didn’t get to conclude anything on the topic  ‘ patience ‘.Discovered that it’s a word that can be used to describe 2 different things. First, to wait for something or someone and secondly,  to bear or deal with something not comfortable or difficult. Bearing this in mind we need to know which of the 2 was being referred to, as the fruit if the spirit.

I may not know the Hebrew word used in the original text, however looking at different Bible versions may help us . NIV uses ‘forbearance’ intead of patience.  Another version uses the term long-suffering. Based on this , it’s more likely that the patience we are talking about it’s to do with handling difficult situations or people over some time. Being able to hold your cool and not giving in to negativity during trying moments.

You may wonder why we need to have this quality.  I may not know the exact answer  but I do know that if we were a little patient with other people, we would have discovered that under the heap of anger, hate,bitterness, resentment, is just a soul that needs a little bit of love to change for the better. We give up to easily on others because we are not always patient with other people.

I will give a little example.  Parenthood requires a lot of patience.  My niece visited me recently, she is only 2 years. Yes the terrible 2s stage. She would scream all the time if she didn’t get what she wanted.  One time she took her juice bottle thinking I had filled it up. To her dismay, there was nothing inside, she let out a full blown tantrum, threw the bottle away while screaming. I rushed to her not knowing what had happened. I kept asking her what’s wrong. You can never get an answer when a fit is being thrown. Tried to give her a hug and pick her up, she wasn’t having it. I just stood there until she calmed down. I could tell the bottle was empty, then asked her if she wanted more juice. A slight head node with a couple of sniffes is what I got.  After refilling I explained to her that, instead of crying , she could simply ask for more. A few days after this ,the same thing happened,  but this time ,I was in the room, she hadn’t thrown the bottle away, she just looked at me then came running and asked for more. I felt humbled.  This little soul simply needed to be guided over how to express herself.

I could have just told myself, she is always screaming anyway why bother. I could have quietly filled the bottle the first time or not at all. But I decided to ask her a series of questions of why she was crying and also taught her how to communicate better next time.

God is patient with us. I hope we are patientas well to the people God has put in our lives.  He trusts that we will be able to reach out to them. But we can only do that when we walk with the Spirit.

Cheers!

Been reading the book of Ezra. It’s crazy to think that a whole nation really did put off their wives in form of repentance.  They had to rip-off their other half. Something that had become part of their lives. Something as strong as family and blood, all in the name of repentance.

Could we ever do that in this generation?  This event was based on the fact that one of the commands Moses had given the people of Israel was them not to do foreign marriages with the people who inhabited the land they received as a promise. This was because of their wickedness and God didn’t want His people to adopt that. But years down the line, people seem to have forgotten about it. Kind of like our current generation. Ezra was torn apart when he realized they had committed such a sin and a drastic measure was taken. They had to break off those marriages. That’s like breaking off the families entirely; some high level of true repentance.

Am reading this and am like, can our fallen generation ever come back and make a decision to reform everything about them just to dissociate with the worldly nature that has filled the churches today.

What would true repentance mean for a generation like ours?

Too embarrassed that I wasn’t consistent just 2 months into the year.  From telling myself I will post every day, to twice a week to once a week to never again.

Yeah it’s crazy,  but am back again ,and I will be continuing from where I left. The topics for Feb was patience. And the question for the month was How can one study the Bible effectively. 

I think for this post I will answer on the Bible study one. To be honest people have their own way to understanding the Bible. Just like how we would study in school.  I feel like its all to do with your personal learning or grasping habit.  Some undersrand better when reading in a quite room, no disturbances.  Some need to be in a discussion group of some kind to grasp concepts better. Some would sing rhymes. We are build in our different ways. And sadly won’t fit in a one standard way of doing things. So I can’t say there is a formula for this.

I believe our walk in knowing God starts from somehow and takes us somewhere . You are continously being changed. So it depends on where you are in your relationship with God. And what season you are in.

So far we have gathered that it depends on how you grasp information you read as well as what season or level you are in.

For now, my mind, heart and spirit just feel tired. Which is why I wasn’t posting anything . But during my dry spells if I don’t read the word am doomed because I understand that my relationship with God is a two way stream I have to open my heart to Him especially in times like these for Him to show up. So what do I do ? My reading style back in school was choosing the path of less resistance. If i couldn’t read on my own, would listen to audio or videos, study with someone,  go for discussion. I would do what was easiest but bottom line it wouldn’t just stop studying, because I wasn’t some star student, I just had to put in the work. And putting myself where the information is still coming to me atleast ,I grasp something.

In this my dry season. I make myself available to where bible studies are done. Part of a youth group that meets up every Friday evening. I listen to sermons every morning from church. Part of a discussion online forum that run topics twice a week. Recently joined a instagram study group for youths. For me it’s not stopping but choosing the path of less resistance just to expose myself to the word. 

That’s how best I can answer this question.