Public Spectacle

Colossians 2:15 “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

It’s the hour when the called out priesthood of the Lord of Hosts is once again reminded of the time when God made a public spectacle of His love by giving His Only Son Jesus to die on the cross for us. How often do we remember this when we absently comment on someone’s common mistakes or intentionally launch into a diatribe over the great injustice done by another- that the Lord not only took a stand to cancel every one of our merited condemnations, but has also taken His rightful seat to continue advocating on the behalf of the entire world? (Romans 8:33-34 “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”)

We live in a day and age when it’s possible to make known our views, opinions and judgements on any given topic or person, simply at the touch of a finger. The technology in communication which reinvents itself every nanosecond to supposedly bring people closer together, has endowed mankind with the power to raise an applause for one and an outcry against another, making anything and everything a sensational news item. There are several platforms on which the most mundane mistakes and the most private misdemeanors recieve avalanches of undue attention from across the globe. We, as the church of God, need to make the difference in the way we use these channels, by categorically manifesting the love of God at every given opportunity, because that is exactly what Jesus did- every time a group of people looked down on someone’s misdeeds, Jesus turned up to embrace that very person in full view of everyone (Luke 19:5-7 “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.””)

What Jesus did in that moment looking up at Zaccheus, was actually directed at the crowds that surrounded Him. Instead of pointing a finger at Zaccheus’ malpractices or demanding a public apology for his unethical means of money-making, Jesus simply made a scene of His reckless love for the sinner-man! He set the perfect example to show that we who are called to be in the business of building each other up in love shouldn’t be tearing each other down (Galatians 5:14-15 “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”)

Christian exhorting is NOT mudslinging a miscreant with an audience watching. It is the private dealing with a sibling, done in utter meekness and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, with a heightened awareness of the ONLY God-desired outcome- to bring home the prodigal (Galatians 6:1 “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”) And for those of us who would persist in unveiling another’s mistakes, the Lord admonishes that we first look into our own closet (John 8:7 “.. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”) An anonymous writer has rightly said, “for often he who is first to find fault, is the very one who has first transgressed.”

God bless

Good & Faithful Servant

 

1 Corinthians 4:1-2 “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.”

God’s servants are watched!! When we are faithful to God in doing His business, our Father in heaven who watches over us celebrates declaring us “good and faithful servants” and those who witness our works will witness our ‘intact testimony ‘– An intact testimony is faithful to the faithfulness of God in our lives.  It cannot be planned and executed with intelligent manipulation or organised efforts, but it is a genuine consequence of God at work in us and His grace toward us (2 Corinthians 1:12 “ For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God….”).  It is impossible to be found faithful in what we do for God without consistence in dependence and intimacy with God because it is only our relationship with Him that produces the fruit of His Holy Spirit in us, and faithfulness is a WHOLE PART of it! (Galatians 5:22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,”)

Loyal ‘Kingdom pursuits’ are self evident because they are the direct outcome of faithfully submitting to the Holy Spirit working in us and not the outcome of our own creative controls. They will not just be eloquent talks with religious stunts but will actually be the voice of God endorsed by the manifestation of the power of His Spirit. When one is serving God with integrity, in whatever be the capacity, his intentions are to inspire the faith of others in His Master Whom he serves through the service rendered, and not toward adding followers to his own fan base (1 Corinthians 2: 4- 5 “and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,  so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God”). 

The works of a good servant of God also bear some classic hallmarks by which they can be identified! Everything that is said and done will boast the name of Jesus Christ and will be a tribute to the Father God  (Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”) When one pursues to serve God faithfully, whatever one does will be out of sincerely fearing God and revering His wondrous work  (1 Samuel 12:24 “ Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things he has done for you. “)

We can be sure that we are faithfully answering our calling when we take our orders only from the Caller and His appointed agents. Nothing and nobody else must have an influence on how we execute what God has called us to do.

The action or inaction of anyone else should not force any reaction from us that is not faithful to the calling with which God has called us .

It is a serious mistake to get ‘under pressure’ from any external or internal forces  and and work anything, however good it may seem, outside of the context of what the voice of  God has instructed us (1 Samuel 13:11-13 “Samuel said, “What have you done?” And Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.’ So I FORCED myself, and offered the burnt offering.” And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. “)

God is always willing to approve our labor of love. Yet, how we please God with what we do has little to do with what is in our hands and more to do with what is in our hearts. If our desire is to meet God’s standards in the work we produce we must also be humble enough to be open to correction and discipline from Him and seek to perfect what we present unto Him, otherwise we are in the peril of opening ourselves to diverse devises of the devil (Genesis 4:7 “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”) There is world of difference between being rewarded for work done in bondage and work done is son-ship. Worldly accolades can earn us brownie points with our earthly bosses whom we slave for, but with God we serve as sons and daughters rather than as slaves. For those who are faithfully carrying on about their Father’s business and work alongside Him under His authority, He has reserved an INHERITANCE and given them unreserved access to it (Luke 15:29,31 “but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends…. And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. “)

Shall we then put our hands to the plow and serve in a Kingdom befitting manner, never turning around and always be found faithful to the Faithful One! Whatever He has entrusted to us whether small or big, seemingly significant or insignificant let us do it faithfully because when we do He will entrust us with more… (Matthew 25:23 “ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’) What a promise!!

God Bless

 

 

 

 

God made us FLINT-STONES!

Ezekiel 3:9 “I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”

There’s such a might in the provision of God’s grace for His people that allows us to give ourselves in perfect submission to His will and in doing that to still stand upright in the midst of unrepentant hearts. Through the wonderful power of the Holy Spirit, God prepares the spirit-man that resides inside of each of us with such immense strength, which our physical-man embodies as a boldness in our right-standing with God that won’t bend under the pressures of the shake-downs that the world puts us through (Ephesians 3:16 “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man”)

When we put ourselves in the hands of our maker and know that He is molding us, we ought to expect that there will be a time and place where He will position us that will truly showcase His handiwork to every one that comes in contact with us, even when the viewers have got their blinders on (Acts 13:47 “For this is what the Lord has commanded us: “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.””). While our original disposition is weak in itself to carry the weight of God’s call to its fulfillment in the face of the disobedience that reigns all around us, the Lord gives us sufficient grace that causes us to become flint-faced because if we are any less tough than that we would break under the pressure in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…”). To obey God and speak faith when everything around us speaks defeat, failure and discord with God, is to swim upstream and against the tide and it requires so much resistance that it is only the love of the Father, grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, quite literally and not just a pronouncement, that can uphold us.

The God-given steadfastness is provided to us to submit to Him and to His sovereign will. When we desire so much to hearken to His voice and do His bidding then He gives us the ability to  drown out the cacophony that surrounds us.However, there is a stark contrast between this resoluteness that is birthed from the Spirit of submission from the stubbornness that comes from the pride of being passionate about the things of God. Our Lord Jesus demonstrated His submission to His Father’s will in that He was focused in His path and nothing could distract Him from His purpose (Luke 9:51 “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”) That Jesus would be given the grace to persevere in His divine mission upon the completion of which He would be lifted up to be seated at the right-hand of the Father was prophesied of Him years before His birth (Isaiah 50:7 “But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.) The strength that we require to fulfill God’s plans for us has been pre-deposited in our lives from the foundations of the earth by the choice that He made of calling us “in Christ”. It is God’s placement of us “in Christ” that makes us sharper and harder than flint so that we don’t flinch when the world happens to us (Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love”)

Today’s “rebellious house” is more than just an atmosphere of unbelief and disobedience to God. It is also in the prevalence of deception even among the so-called people of the faith. There’s a lot of feel-good factor involved in the attitude of worship that doesn’t allow for the Holy Spirit  to really penetrate the hearts of God’s people. It is in such a setting that the Lord prepares His own chosen children with anointing to help them be discerning and remain genuine (1 John 2:20-21 “ But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”)

God Bless.

 

 

 

 

Off-loading the right cargo

Jonah 1:5 “Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.”

There are times when God allows a gale to blow over our lives, not to topple us over but to sever some associations that might have climbed aboard and lying dormant somewhere around. The reason is not that they’re wrong associates but that their purposed destination is quite different  to where we are headed and God does not want us to facilitate someone’s disobedience however passive the facilitation may be. 

GOD BLESS 

Soulwinner

Romans 5:1(NLT )”Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”
Finding faults in someone is easy but letting them know that they’ve been made FAULTLESS is the true calling of a soulwinner. 

God bless 

Get In Touch!

Matthew 9:20-22 “ And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.”

Our God is REACHABLE!! No matter how crowded it can get, if we are willing to put out our hand in faith we will find that “His Garment” is accessible. The garment of Jesus was typically one of the Jewish attire, just as that of any other Israelite. It was inclusive of the tassels on the corners which consummated the law (Numbers 15:38-39 “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them…”)  To the hurting woman the hem of Jesus’ garment represented the fulfillment of all the commandments that she knew she’d not been able to fulfill. After all, she’d been “ceremonially unclean” for twelve years until then and could not be declared as clean until she had made an offering for the cleansing which would require at least 7 days of not discharging any blood.

The woman recognized her need to get in touch with Jesus because she believed that if she would ONLY touch His garment she would be made well. Physical wellness, a sense of wholeness and well-being is most often a motive for reaching out to God. The sick and hurting have been known to throng to places that are great distances away and to experts that are almost unbearably unaffordable, just to receive healing in their bodies. But this woman had realized that her HEALING is both accessible and available at the stretching forth of her hand in faith. To the one who believes that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of ALL the commandments and that His garment (His righteousness) can bring salvation, their faith can and does relieve them of bodily suffering and restores them to perfect health (Romans 10:4 “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”)

The stigma that would have been attached to the disease the woman was carrying around for twelve years is at best unimaginable. She had to have been looked down upon for her “ceremonial uncleanness” by the society at large. We may be considered as outcast in the midst of our own people because of our circumstances and maybe people don’t want us near them for fear of contagiously acquiring our situation. It might be that we have reached out to people but haven’t found anyone who would want to take our hand or may be we have feared soiling others with our distasteful past and so have steered clear of them. But if we come into CONTACT with the “Living Word” we are purified. Jesus, ‘The Word who became flesh’ cleanses us from every defilement through His Word (John 15:3 “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”) Our spotlessness matters to Him because we are His dwelling place and He is the “Temple Cleanser” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “ Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”)

Twelve years of “Haemorrhoissa”- continuous menstruation would mean that for the entirety of that period she was unable to conceive a child. Her identity as a woman with child-bearing abilities was compromised. Her fertility was masked by her physical condition. We may possess the potential to be productive in something specific but if there is a constant outflow of our time and energy into other causes we are hindered from conceiving God’s purposed gifts for us. But today, if we are ready to reach out and experience the tangible presence of God in our lives and CONNECT with Him in faith, He is ready heal us of our infirmity and end barrenness in our lives (Exodus 23:25-26 “You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”)

Are we prepared to blindly reach our in faith and touch the hem of Christ’s Garment?(Mark 5:56 “..And as many as touched it were made well.” His Righteousness is easily accessible and available. Let’s Put our hands in the hands of the Man from Galilee.

God Bless.

 

 

 

 

 

Storm it out!

Job 40:6 “Job 40:6 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm”

Sometimes the sound of defeat can become so monotonous in our lives that we begin to feel beat down and and see no hope on the horizon. But God is about to rend the heavens and thunder upon our situation and rain down His peace over us. Let us listen to hear His coming and recieve Him.

God bless.

God-fearing Wisdom

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

What does it mean to fear God and how does it lead to wisdom?The idea of fearing God is not to get us to be scared of the ‘Big guy in the sky’, but to be awe-inspired of God in the fullness of our knowledge of how great and mighty He is. When we recognize God as omnipotent and everything else as impotent just because He is with us, we are safely on the threshold of wisdom. To fear God is to have complete confidence that no matter what we face, God is able to deliver us from it. But if our fear of ominous tidings overtakes our fear of God it is because we lack in the knowledge of the Holy One in us.The bible recommends that we ask for wisdom when we find ourselves in such a place (James 1:5 “ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him”). But it takes wisdom to ask for more wisdom.

King Solomon was a God-fearing man who spoke three thousand proverbs and wrote a thousand and five songs in his lifetime, all of which he owed to God-given wisdom and exceedingly great understanding that was granted to him in a divine encounter with the Lord. When he took the reigns of the kingdom of Israel from his father King David he had very real problems.He found himself in the precarious position of having to administer justice to the Lord’s chosen people, a nation so large and wide that he felt incompetent as a youth to preside over. King Solomon’s wisdom was kick-started by his fearing God more than he did his situation. He recognized the sovereignty of  God, that it had been He who had been merciful to his father David, faithful in His promises to keep him ruler and one of his sons on the throne forever. So when God showed up to bless him all he asked was for an understanding heart to know the difference between God’s goodness and the evil of men (1 Kings 3:8-9 “And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”)

We serve a God who is jealous over us and doesn’t tolerate our bowing down before any idol (Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.) The real danger in fearing something that is not God is that the thing we fear most becomes our idol because we find ourselves constantly thinking about it, vexing over it and, in essence, ‘worshiping it’ instead of seeking the face of God (Ezekiel 14 :3 “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity….”). The very posture we assume when we are faced with a tough cookie will tell what we fear more- God or the situation. When we are God fearing- we will bow ourselves to Him who holds all the answers instead of being bowed down by the problem itself. When King David learned that His child was struck with an illness by the Lord because of his sin with Bathsheba he didn’t rush to the side of his ailing son or seek healers, instead he sought the Lord with all of His heart to seek His grace (2 Samuel 12:16 “David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.”) When we idolize our problems we foolishly display our ignorance of how big our God is and of all that He can do (Jeremiah 10:14 “But foolish men without knowledge of God bow before their idols.”)

 Oswald Chambers said

“The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else whereas if you don’t fear God you fear everything else.”

God knows how frail our hearts are, so when we look up from our troubles to Him in awe-struck wonder only to faint in the presence of His holiness and the fear of His majesty, he will gently pick us up and impart the wisdom we need by reminding us of Who He is and will tell us to FEAR NOT! (Revelation 1:17-18 “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

God Bless.

Blindfolded NOT blinded !

Acts 9: 8-9 “Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”

Many a time, as  Christian believers, we receive an instruction or a prophetic word or even just a hint of what is to come from the Word of God or through an anointed servant but the journey to that promised place seems like a walk down a dark alley, the unknown path to a known destination.These occasions help us realise that it is the intention of God that we stop being reliant on our limited vision, limited knowledge and limited ability for the journey. Stubborn as we can be in our self-sufficiency, He impairs our near-sightedness fully so that we can start depending on Him and on the hands He places on our shoulders to lead us. Though we are “blind-sighted” we come to no harm because God appoints angels to guide and guard us on our way to the land of  our promises (Psalm 91:11-12 “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”)

That is precisely what Saul, the persecutor of ‘the Way’, who had just had a divine encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ, was faced with. His destination was Damascus, one he was headed for anyway and one that was also chosen by the Lord for Saul to instruct him further. But it mattered to God how Saul got there and what he would do when he got there. So Saul found that his sight was no longer in him and that he would have to depend on fellow-travellers to arrive at the end of his journey. God places suitable companions and leaders that can uphold us on the move and equip us to receive our promises (Joshua 1:6 “…. for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.”)

The loss of sight that occurs just before we begin the road-trip to our promises or at a pit-stop on the way is not blindness but blindfoldedness !!

The blindness of Saul was nothing but God blindfolding him so that He could lead him through a path that called for a closer and more dependent relationship with Himself and one that would end in the restoration of his natural eyes but also in the opening up his spiritual eyes (Isaiah 42:16 “And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.”)

The episode of ‘blindfoldedness’ as I call it, is also a period of fasting from every distraction that can lead us astray. In the three days that Saul could not see anyone, he also did not eat or drink anything. He was totally dependent on the Lord for sustenance and for guidance. Although Saul could see nothing physically, He was seeing supernaturally all that was to come to pass (Acts 9:11-12 “ And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has SEEN IN A VISION a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.”)  So when we are in the tunnel and darkness surrounds us, we need to take it as an opportunity to tune out everything that is not edifying and tune into the Spirit who will light up our way.

To say that our natural sight is deceptive and incapable of leading us on our spiritual voyage is an understatement. In the natural, we are not in the capacity to fathom the heights to which God can take us nor the depths we might have to endure to get there (Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”). Our narrow vision is owed to the fact that we see and think in the flesh. That is why Jesus called this “darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,  but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”) Therefore He gave us His Holy Spirit Who can light us up from the inside and put an end to our visual disability in the natural and the supernatural (Acts 9:17-18″…“Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight…”)

If we are in that place today where we can see our destiny and promises but have no clue how they are going to be fulfilled, let’s fear not. Let us blindly choose to be ‘blindfolded’ and led by the Holy Spirit.

God Bless.

 

Being present in God’s presence

Genesis 4:4-5 “And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering,  but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

It is time to assess what kind of offering we are bringing to God and to His house.This is not about making a big donation to the church, increasing our tithing, giving to charity or giving more to charity, but about the motivations behind our actions in the presence of God, in our churches and fellowships. Are we making an Abel offering or a Cain offering?  The offerings brought by Cain and Abel have always created a lot of speculation among bible scholars, preachers, and Christians in general  (Genesis 4: 2-5 “ ..Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. “) 

Both Abel  and Cain’s offerings were directly related to their respective occupations. They brought the best results of their efforts, to God, one as a farmer the other as a shepherd. So, what else could Cain have given God that would have been pleasing to Him? Apostle The bible tells us that Abel’s offering was respected by God because it was given from a heart of faith, which was not the case with Cain (Hebrews 11:4 “ By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.”)  So any sacrifice presented to God from outside the point of faith that He is LORD over us, is and will be rejected, no matter how valuable.

Have we been like Cain in making our sacrifices?  Have we? Haven’t we? Cain’s offering lack the element of faith. Haven’t we all at some point or the other demonstrated unbelief during an act of worship? Made empty gestures, sung hollow praises and followed mundane rituals in the name of worship without recognizing our own sinful nature and the sovereignty of God in that instant? Aren’t we Cain when we simply go through the motions of praise, offertory, sermon with no real involvement or get distracted by text messages, take a selfie, refresh posts on social media pages? How many times have we turned around to share a sweet tidbit of gossip with a fellow sister or brother? Oh, How Cain are we that we crane our necks to check out that overdressed lady sitting in the front row or to count how many mistakes the preacher makes while he’s preaching. We have been Cain when have not reverenced the presence of God because we didn’t really believe that He is in our midst.

God showed up the moment the get-together was announced in the name of Jesus Christ (Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”), Had we faith that our Lord is listening, observing and yearning for us to acknowledge Him, we’d have turned up with a better sacrifice-one of  brokenness at how much God can love sinners like us and a remorse-filled heart at how defeated our attitudes have been thus far (Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.”)

It is never too late (Genesis 4:7 “If you do well, will you not be accepted?…”) The greatest present we can give God is “BEING PRESENT” in His presence.

God Bless.